Kingstone Press League 1 Preview: York City Knights v North Wales Crusaders

Following their 30-22 victory at London Skolars, which keeps them in second place, York City Knights face a busy time over the next few days. Following the game against North Wales Crusaders they take on Hemel Stags on Sunday.

Coach James Ford said: “It was a real tough game at London. They’ve improved tremendously from early in the season when we played them. With the ball they asked a lot of questions. I spoke to Jermaine after the game and he was disappointed they didn’t get more out of it and I can understand why.

“It’s going to be a tough week obviously but we’ve got a good squad and the boys are looking forward to it. Our focus is on North Wales and we’ll deal with Hemel after that. It’s a challenging week but we’ve had to face a lot of challenges this season and we seem to have dealt with most of them appropriately.”

Centre Tyler Craig is likely to be out for two weeks with a shoulder problem.

North Wales Crusaders were beaten 30-14 at home by Swinton Lions. Coach Anthony Murray said: “No complaints, we were beaten fair and square. I have to say that Swinton are probably the best team we’ve played and I think they’ll go on to win it. They were really well drilled and the way they executed some of their plays was really good.

“We’ve got quite a lot of injuries and we lost Callum Wright at the weekend with a broken arm. We’ve got six first-team regulars sidelined for the rest of the season, which is obviously having a big impact.

“We’ve got 16 fit players for York on Thursday night. It’s a short turnaround but we’ve just got to deal with it and hopefully put in a half-decent performance and see if we can get anything out of the game.

“York are going really well, they really like to attack, so it will be a tough ask for us but we’ll try and give a good account of ourselves.”