Left to rot: Players' contracts found dumped at old Scarborough ground

The McCain Stadium ground was left to rot when the club - nicknamed the Seagulls - went out of business in June 2007.

It has been repeatedly hit by vandalism, and when local councillor Geoffrey Evans went to the rubbish-strewn site to investigate a small fire he discovered the personal documents.

Scarborough Town FC was formed from the ashes of the old club - and secretary Sean Hunter revealed that they had found hundreds of papers containing highly personal information at the ground.

He said: "There was stuff all over the clubhouse. There were hundreds of documents and quite a few of them were player contracts. Obviously someone had been in the building and got into an office, found them and just scattered them all over the place.

"I took what I could manage - I filled the boot of my car - returned those I could to ex-players I was still in touch with and shredded the rest. It's very bad that the situation was allowed to get like this."

Derek Megginson, former secretary of the defunct club, said he had tried to remove the items after the club shut down but was refused entry by a security guard.

He said: "Everything that belonged to Scarborough FC itself had to be left in the ground. I went to the ground some weeks after it was closed to see what I could salvage but there was a security guard there and I was refused entry.

"At one point we were allowed in to take some plaques that we wanted to return to their owners but that was about it as far as I can remember. We weren't allowed to take any records at all, but we did ask if we could."

During the time the ground was closed it was run by receivers Begbies Traynor until Scarborough Council completed a deal to buy the site in December 2008.

Joint liquidator of Scarborough FC Rob Sadler, of Begbies Traynor, said: "During the period of the liquidation we removed financial records from the property relating to the last six years of business, but as owner prior to a sale being agreed, we were under no legal obligation to remove any other records."