Ratcliffe critical of Knights win

York City Knights qualified for the knock-out stages of the Northern Rail Cup with a comfortable 58-12 win over London Skolars.

The 11 Knights tries were shared among nine players but assistant-coach James Ratcliffe was far from happy.

"It was a pretty patchy performance, I'm not over-pleased with how we've played, neither in attack or defence," Ratcliffe told BBC Radio York.

"Attack-wise I just think we were a little bit impatient."

Ratcliffe added: "We've been a bit lazy sometimes in defence, we'd set a goal of trying to get no points against us.

"We've qualified for the Northern Rail Cup and the good thing is the lads know they haven't played particularly brilliantly.

"We went away from our game plan after scoring 12 points and we started doing things we didn't want them to do.

"Once we put that right at half-time we started rolling forward again and, sure enough, the points started rolling again.

"If we'd been a bit more patient it wouldn't have been only 11 (tries), it would've been a lot more."

Full-back Danny Ratcliffe and Tom Haberecht both scored two of the Knights' tries, with the other seven coming from Dave Clayton, Paul Hughes, Mike Mitchell, John Oakes, Paul March, David March and Danny Grimshaw.

Next Sunday the York City Knights take on amateur side Wigan St Patricks, who have won eight games in a row in the National Conference League Premier Division.

"Regardless of who it is, if it's London (Skolars) or if it's St Helens, it's how you prepare and how you stay disciplined for the full 80 minutes that matters, so it's going to be a big test of our character next week," Ratcliffe added.

"It's not going to be an easy game by any means whatsoever. It is their Wembley. We need to be really professional in our build-up this week."