London Broncos coach Danny Ward (pictured) hopes that some positives can come out of his side’s Challenge Cup exit to York City Knights.
The Broncos scored three early tries before succumbing to Jimmy Keinhorst’s late winner in Ealing.
But defeat allows Ward’s team to concentrate on their main aim of promotion this season, while also giving him a chance to look at Academy products Josh Hodson and Will Blakemore, with the latter completing a remarkable return to the club.
Ward said: “We saw the game as an opportunity to give a couple of young lads a crack, rest a couple of bodies and manage some minutes for others as well.
“Whether that was the right thing to do or not we’ll see, but hopefully it will pay in the long term.
“It was disappointing, because you never like losing and the way we started the game was really positive.
“But fair play to York, we knew they’d stick in there and there was lots for us to learn.
“We won’t lose too much sleep over it.”
On Hodson and Blakemore, he added: “Josh has been training with the first team in pre-season.
“He played out of position on the wing as he’s normally a centre and he didn’t let anyone down.
“Will is a good story. He was at the club before, but we couldn’t keep him when he turned 19, even though we liked what he was doing.
“He went away and stopped playing; he was looking at getting into the Marines and taking a military path.
“But when our reserves started again we gave him a call to see if he wanted to have another crack.
“He’s been back less than a month, but he’s really impressed and that’s credit to the reserves staff at the club.
“He’s one that could have could have been lost to the game, but instead he’s now played for our first team.”
