York City Knights staged an amazing second-half comeback to win 37-24 at Oldham and go above them in the Championship One table.

The Knights were 14-0 down early on after losing influential loose-forward David March in the pre-match warm-up.

Coach James Ratcliffe told BBC York: "We just never touched the ball for the first 15 minutes. They had seven or eight sets more than us.

"But the lads showed a lot of character and resolve to come out and win."

Ratcliffe refused to use the loss of March as an excuse for their poor start.

"We highlighted that we'd only been in their half three times," he said. "We'd bombed two and scored one, so we were certainly going to get some joy if we got into the right areas of the park.

There's a vast amount of character and a vast amount of spirit in the team now James Ratcliffe

"When we did manage to do that in the second half it showed that we can score."

A key moment was the decision to bring on Loz Wildbore, who was to take the man-of-the-match award, for Adam Mitchell at half-back after 20 minutes.

"I don't think it was a brave decision," said Ratcliffe. "Adam wasn't performing. He's had a little sulk. He came back on and he's done all right.

"Once we got the momentum with the first score straight after half-time you could see the players physically rise. People started believing in themselves.

"We've shown that we've put what's happened over the last six, seven weeks behind us. There's a vast amount of character and a vast amount of spirit in the team now.

"The job's not done yet. There's no point if we're going to upset ourselves at home against Swinton the week after next, we've got to perform against them now."

The injury to March is not thought to be serious, while Jordan Ross went off injured but it was only cramp.

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