IT will be business as usual at York City Knights this week - despite kicking off at a different time on a different day.

York's clash with Blackpool Panthers was originally scheduled for Sunday at 3pm in line with all the other home games but it has been brought forward by the best part of 22 hours in order to avoid a clash with the International York 9s tournament taking place at Heworth all weekend.

Last year, the finals day of the 9s was eclipsed by York's Arriva Trains Cup semi-final at Hull KR, splitting the potential spectators for both down the middle.

But head coach Mick Cook has shrugged off fears that the different time will disrupt the pre-match build-up.

He said: "There will be no problems there - it's not a massive change really.

"We kick off normally at 3pm but the preparation will be pretty much the same.

"The players have their own individual preparation routines and they will just have to put them back a couple of hours.

"It's not going to be a massive change."

Cook meanwhile is hopeful of another bumper crowd following on from the 3,224 that witnessed the last-minute defeat of Hunslet Hawks ten days ago.

"If we could get another crowd above 2,000, that would be great," he said. "We did have the family fun day which took us over 3,000 but Heworth, where the 9s is going on, is not far away and if people do come to York for that, they might want to come over and watch us, too.

"The bigger the crowd the better - it all adds to the atmosphere - but the York crowds are always good anyway."

He continued: "Sometimes when you're a little bit down it would be easy to go quiet but they tend not to do that at York.

"If you look back to the Keighley game when we were probably dead and buried, the York crowd kept with the players and as they got better, they made even more noise.

"So hopefully there'll be another big crowd on Saturday."

Updated: 10:38 Wednesday, June 01, 2005