THE Chester City affiliation saga took another dramatic twist last night when the Football Association appeared to disregard a unanimous vote from all the Conference Clubs by still refusing to ratify their application for membership.

The lack of affiliation means that tonight’s scheduled home match against Gateshead has been postponed, following on from the cancellation of last Saturday’s trip to Grays Athletic.

The FA had insisted that the Football Conference canvas all their Blue Square Premier League membership to see if they were prepared to accept City into the fold. All 23 clubs voted in favour of Chester City becoming members of the division.

However, rather than accepting the vote of the League’s membership, the FA have now prolonged this unedifying saga by summoning the hierarchy of the Conference to a meeting on Thursday, when they will thrash out the affiliation episode further.

Chester, who are now proposing to approach former FA compliance officer Graham Bean for advice, issued a statement last night putting their side of the story, which is now threatening to turn into a soap opera.

Part of the statement read: “We would like to take this opportunity to clarify, that despite ever increasing pressure for a public statement, we have been unavailable to provide a full statement whilst negotiations were ongoing because of commercial confidentiality.

“We can now only apologise for lack of information released to the public, however we believe Chester City Football Club can do no more to secure our membership into the Football Conference, and that every effort has been made by both the Conference and Chester to achieve the desired outcome.”

Nobody from the Football Association was available for comment last night.