He was invited on to York City’s board some 20 years ago and became chairman 10 years ago, taking over from Michael Sinclair, a former businessman who is now a local priest. Sinclair has not spoken to the press, but he is known to have passed his 123,000 shares to Craig not for the market rate, but for no more than £1 each. Several former directors have said they did the same, explaining that it was considered a privilege and a duty to serve the club, and it was a York City tradition never to seek to make money out of it.Under Craig, York have struggled, first to stay in the Second Division, then, since relegation in 1999, to avoid relegation to the Conference. They have, though, developed a reasonably successful youth policy which included the sale of Jonathan Greening to Manchester United for £1m in 1998. Craig earned national notoriety in 1994 by becoming the only chairman to refuse to sign up to the “Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football” campaign, a stance he maintained until two years ago.In July 1999, Craig wrote to all York City’s shareholders, asking them to approve a plan to transfer the club, and Bootham Crescent, to a new company, Bootham Crescent Holdings (BCH).

Craig pointed out that he and his three fellow directors, John Quickfall, Colin Webb and the former playing hero Barry Swallow, owned 94 per cent of the shares and had already approved the plan.He explained that the purpose of the transfer was to escape one of the Football Association’s rules. The rule provides that when a club is wound up, its shareholders should be paid only what it originally cost them to buy their shares. If there were any surplus, the rule provides that the money must go to local sporting or charitable institutions, or the FA’s Benevolent Fund, not to the shareholders.Craig explained: “Your directors are concerned that in certain circumstances these provisions could adversely affect the ability of the company or any successor to continue playing football at Bootham Crescent.”In fact, it is difficult to see how the rule could be interpreted in this way. Its purpose is the exact opposite – to protect clubs and their grounds from asset strippers by removing the ability to profit financially from winding up a club and selling its ground. The rule was for a century part of three aimed at preventing people from exploiting clubs financially. The other two provisions of “Rule 34″ were restrictions on dividends and directors’ salaries.Since Tottenham Hotspur became the first football club to float on the Stock Exchange in 1983, top clubs have sidestepped the provisions by forming holding companies, thereby allowing shareholders to make money out of clubs.

The FA has never protested.In 1998, on the advice of Nic Coward, the FA’s head of regulation, Rule 34’s first two restrictions were abolished, even while the Football Task Force was reaching a conclusion that the rules should be updated, not weakened, to provide effective protection for clubs in the age of the plc. Yet, after a thorough review of the rules, Coward recommended that the FA keep the third restriction, against winding up a club and selling its ground.At York, the transfer of the shares duly took place and Bootham Crescent was transferred to the holding company, free of the FA’s restriction. The Land Registry notes that BCH paid the club £165,000 for Bootham Crescent.In BCH’s latest accounts, filed only a fortnight ago, Craig wrote: “BCH was formed as part of a corporate restructuring exercise to enable the club to be secure in its activities.”The accounts disclose a club making a loss, its wage bill exceeding its income, but not in the near-terminal position of many lower division clubs. It has no major creditors, an overdraft stated to be under £100,000 and, crucially, no mortgages on Bootham Crescent.All of which has made the directors’ actions even more unpalatable to supporters.