Bristol City Football Club,
Ashton Gate,
Winterstoke Road ,
Bristol ,
BS3 2NS.

7 November, 2003

Dear Football League Appeals Panel Chairman,

Following the postponement of our appeal against your decision to negate Liam Rosenior's contract and declare him a free agent, we have now had time to reconsider our position. I am writing to inform you that we wish to withdraw our appeal. Despite the fact that we spent a fortune nurturing this egocentric teenager, we now regard it as entirely fair that the contract was ruled null and void just because the postmark on the envelope we sent it out in was a day late. We accept fully that parties should be allowed to escape from their legal obligations by spotting such minutiae and have no intention of wasting the time of the appeals panel. To be honest, I cannot believe we judged such a matter to be worthy of your time and have instructed my club physio to administer me with 100 lashes from a cat o' nine tails.

Since Mr Rosenior was good enough to bring the matter to our attention, we have conducted an internal audit and discovered that we also posted contracts late to Lee Matthews and Simon Clist several years ago. I am sure you can appreciate how mortified I was to learn, upon further investigation, that the envelope in which we posted our renewed and highly expensive three-year contract to Danny Wilson in the summer failed to comply with the current minimum standards of manufacture defined by British Standards regulators.

Naturally, as upset as we are that we could have allowed this to happen, it would be unfair for us to hold these individuals to such contracts. I am sure you would be as keen as me to release them from their responsibilities to the club with no further commitment or remuneration required on either side. Moves are already underway to offer Aaron Brown a new deal via courier pigeon.

Thank you so much. I do hope this letter arrives in ample time. We forked out the extra money for a Penny Black just to make sure.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Lansdown

(Chairman, accomplished radio sports summariser and winner of the club golfing tournament, which was in no way fixed.)