Fax Knight

He is in amazing condition. Like a bodybuilder a week or two before a contest. Looks to have less than 10% body fat. Problem is he’s always injured and is rumoured to be off to Fev.

Great game yesterday. Whoever is doing our Aus recruitment should take a bow. Though I wonder how long it will take the usual suspects to come sniffing round Martin and Galeano. I hope we’ve got them on decent contracts?

Good effort today by all the players. Nice to see Jack Martin get a try as I think he was with his parents after the game - from Bondi to Batley, lucky them. Brown and Law were solid under the (very) high ball all afternoon. Apart from the usual dumb penalties, York always had the measure of a pretty mediocre Batley team. According to their decent fans I was sitting with they had a fair few missing, but then so did we. Hopefully something to build on.

Daggers always injured. Waste of money. If you get a few games in a row from Hingano that’s a miracle, good player though he is. Edwards has disappeared and Bailey has signed for Hull three games into the season. New signings totally underwhelming and Ta’ii ever closer to his bus pass and nowhere to be seen. What a great start to the season. Who’s going to say “That’s the spirit”? Maybe Thompson can still inspire them on Sunday. If we had 13 with his attitude we’d win every week.

Agreed. No sense of loyalty. As others have said, it’s a short career and they have to look after themselves. Fair enough. If they had been ever-present for a year or two, I’d wish them well, but Edwards and Antrobus have spent more time in rehab than on the pitch. How many games is it for those two in two years? Bailey is off to Hull as well. Edwards is looking like the player who excited us all when he first signed. No wonder clubs like York go nowhere, it’s just a revolving door. Cobble together a decent team one year and then half of them FO elsewhere so you start all over again. If Antrobus won’t be fit until August then get shot of him now. Even if you have to pay him due to his contract, why have him hanging around if he’ll probably never play for us again.

Fair enough. But the fact remains that it’s incredibly hard to hold onto players or build a team fit for Super League without a lot of cash. Look at how many good players London have developed and lost to the “heartlands” when they have the pick of the entire north. Even with Hughes shovelling money in for years, their supported base has dwindled and look where they are now.

Well done to AJ for taking his chance. He was excellent. But he highlights why second tier clubs will always be second tier clubs. Find and develop young talent and the vultures swoop, despite them hoovering up 99% of the most promising juniors at 16, most of whom are let go. What was our crowd last week? Barely looked to be a thousand there. Okay, Toulouse bring no fans, but a lot of other clubs won’t bring many either. Short of a massive cash injection from somewhere/someone, Super League will never happen. And that applies to pretty much every Championship club.

He’s 38 and after his injury played very short minutes in the final few games. Maybe he wasn’t fully fit? But we do need a big “Pele” type prop. We must have some of the smallest set of props in the Championship. Our best prop is actually Jordan Thompson- but then he’s head and shoulder above the rest of the forwards. One of our best-ever signings. Let’s hope the stories about Ikahihifo are true as while he’s no spring chicken, he does have size and the capability to inflict some damage.

Antrobus was one of our best players before his injury. He should be on the bench otherwise how is he going to get fit? He could even go straight in to replace Thomson. Young Field has done a decent job as a stand-in centre, but he’s really a second row and so Antrobus could slot in there as well. Nice to have selection headaches for a change.

Let’s hope Bailey gets back soon - the season will be over shortly. What’s the betting someone swoops in and offers him a better deal or he goes back to Oz? I really hope not. Another great contribution from PP, injuring one of our best players for over a year. What a brilliant signing he was.

I don’t know what is going on with RL, but having watched it since the 1970’s, the quantity and duration of injuries is ridiculous . Players missing for over a year never used to happen. When was the last time York were able to play their strongest 17?? I’m sick of it, the players must be sick of it.

Good defensive performance and Cook looked a more than decent player with some excellent distribution and pace - though we seem to have gone from a club with no halfbacks to one with too many. Ata looked a different class of player with ball in hand, but again he ended up wrapped in tape. Dewsbury hung in there and we still didn’t really punch many holes through the forwards, apart from Thompson’s great try towards the end. Still, a good win and nice to see us higher in the table

I could have sworn we had players called Antrobus, Edwards and Cunningham? They seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. Let’s hope they reappear soon.

Well that was disappointing to say the least. Dumb playing Hingano and Thompson out of position. Brown needs a rest, along with a few others. Dagger seems to have a habit of getting sent off. Decent player when he’s on the pitch though. Apart from him, very little pace in the backs and, as even Stevie Wonder would have seen pre-season, the pack is way too small. There’s only two York forwards heavier than me and I’d hardly consider myself a beast of a bloke. And one of them is 37 and is starting to play like it. We’ve got Santi, Antrobus, Edwards and Dee to come in. One day, maybe. Plus AJ, if we ever see him in a York shirt again (let’s hope so) and Pemberton, but he’s only a kid and a few other youngsters. You can’t rely on kids. Not counting loan players, they can disappear in a moment. That’s it. Desperately need some size and aggression.

Believe what you like sunshine. I was there, I wasn’t the only the one. That’s what he said. Maybe he was lying, I’m not. Why would I FFS.

Not saying this was the case on Sunday for one second, but I was talking to an ex-Championship referee a couple of years ago who gave up after being instructed to influence the outcome of a match. This incident was a fair while ago, but this person is highly respected in the game, so I have no reason to believe he was lying to me. Why would he?

You’ve also got a very large Pakistani heritage population who don’t follow either code of rugby. My son played League (at Siddal) and Union for 10 years in the town. I can count on one hand the number of Pakistani heritage lads he played with or against. He went to Crossley Heath and they now have trouble raising a Union team. A number of private schools who used to play them now don’t as they are too weak. The same demographics occur in many traditional League towns. If you fail to engage with a massive part of your local population, it’s hardly surprising your crowds plummet. Ikram Butt was a long time ago. He did an amazing job, but no one continued on from him.

Forgotten about Edwards. What a great signing he was. Gave 100% every time and pretty injury free if I remember. Could do with half a dozen like him now.

Yeah - fair enough. They were decent pro’s who worked hard.

Before him, Cockayne and Horne. We’ve never replaced those two, a ball playing forward and a tough half-back who created something out of nothing.

In terms of Yorks ‘star signing’, there’s been one - Thompson. The rest have been a waste of time and money.

Just add him to the list of lousy signings (there are several other words I could have used that are less polite). Getting to be quite a long list since 2019. I don’t think the word “commitment” and “Ritchie Myler” should ever be used together.

I hope the lad goes well for us, but I’m not sure a 21 year-old second row who has played an handful of first team games for for 8 or 9 clubs (albeit mostly on loan) is really the answer for York. But if the cash isn’t there, what else can they do? On a different note, where is our Chairman by the way? Keeping a very low profile this season….

Lets just hope we can avoid the jaw-breaking and pointless late hits on the opposition. The last thing we need is more of the team sitting in the stands to add to our obligatory injuries. Any news on Bailey and Levi? I’d quite like to see them play again before I take my final journey to the crematorium. There’s nothing wrong with me, but the speed York players recover you never know.

Would be great to have a Chairman with some real cash. I’m another who has never been convinced by him. That’s the only way we’ll ever be a SL team, let alone a quality one. Even then it’s no guarantee - look at how much Hughes has pumped into London. During my 50 years of watching York it’s always bemused me why the city has never been an RL powerhouse (or a football one for that matter) and failed to attract fans and significant investors.