Batley wait on Flanagan fitness

Batley coach Karl Harrison will monitor the fitness of hooker George Flanagan before finalising his squad to face York in Thursday’s televised Championship clash.

Impressive Batley haven’t played since their Carnegie Challenge Cup defeat against Huddersfield.

However, despite winning five of their eight league fixtures this year, Harrison believes there are still areas that can be improved.

He said: “If we can eliminate some of the errors that we keep re-offending with, I think we have got a really good chance of doing well.”

York’s Ben Jones is facing up to six weeks on the sidelines after scans revealed he has a cracked sternum. Sam Lynch (hamstring) is also ruled out of Thursday’s match.

Knights coach Dave Woods has challenged his squad to improve their mental approach if they are to climb out of the bottom three of the Co-operative Championship.

Woods said: “We were very poor against Barrow, and we turned over way too much ball on the second and third battle.

“It’s a mental thing, an attitude thing. The blokes have to get that mental attitude right that they want to do well for each other and they have to do well for each other. We’re looking for a big improvement this week.”

He added: “We’ll make a couple of changes, give a couple of blokes a go and see how we fare.

“We just think it’s more of an attitude thing. We’ve got some good players there and we’ve played some good footy at times – you don’t become bad players overnight.”