YORK City Knights are not set to bring in a new assistant-coach this season.

The Knights have been without an official number two to Richard Agar since player-assistant coach Nathan Graham left Huntington Stadium to join Batley Bulldogs three weeks ago.

Former Keighley legend Jason Ramshaw, who joined the Knights in April as development officer, has assisted as part of the agreement which brought him to York in the first place, but head coach Richard Agar says there are no plans to formally replace Graham.

He explained: "Jason's involved in training and on match-days - we always knew when he came we would involve him in a coaching role - but he is not the official assistant coach as such and we won't be appointing one between now and the end of the year."

Ramshaw said he enjoyed his coaching role, but played down rumours he would be in the running for the top job should Agar - who has been approached by Hull FC to become assistant coach to John Kear next season - move on to the Super League big-guns at the end of the year.

Ramshaw said: "It would be pretty difficult doing the (development) job I'm doing at the moment and combining that with a head coach role.

"Hopefully I will stay involved in the coaching set-up - I would like to develop myself as a coach but I don't think it is the right time to be pushing myself for the head coach position.

"The way it stands Richard is the head coach and nothing has been confirmed that he is going anywhere."

He added: "Part of the agreement when I first came was that I would be involved on match-days and during the week, so I've been doing something similar for the past few months.

"I've been enjoying it. We went through the sticky spell, struggling with injuries, but we seem to have all the guys back and fit now and training has gone really well.

"Sometimes we've been having just 12 or 13 players involved in training due to injuries and players having knocks, and it's difficult to plan and do things as ideally as you want. But in the last three weeks there has been competition for places and we've been having 23 or 24 guys training, making sessions easier to plan for, and they've gone really well.

"I'm enjoying the involvement and it's good working with Richard - he's a very accomplished young coach."

Updated: 11:09 Friday, August 20, 2004