YORK City Knights were today focusing back on their league campaign after the club's remarkable cup exploits ended at Hull KR.

The Knights have always said their priority was to win promotion from National League Two and the much-depleted side's 32-0 defeat in the Arriva Trains Cup semi-final at Craven Park yesterday means they can now concentrate on the remaining ten league games.

Richard Agar's men, who also reached the last eight of the Challenge Cup this season, enter the second half of the league campaign top of the table, with a trip to Workington next up.

"We can concentrate on National League Two now," said Agar. "In a way it's a relief (that we're out) considering the alarming rate we're picking up injuries and in that sense we're pleased to be able to concentrate on the league.

"You've got to look at what we've had to go through in raising a side yesterday and you can realise why I'm not that disappointed. I'm disappointed, yes, but I'm not unduly concerned as I'm quite sure we can put things right."

Injuries and unavailability had forced Agar to bring back departed duo Mark Stewart and Tom Andrews just to make up the numbers on the substitutes' bench - but even those efforts proved in vain as the latter did not play.

Said Agar: "We've put a guy on the bench (Andrews) who has not been near the club for weeks and he's hurt himself in the warm-up - and he was our only forward sub.

"We were lacking in one or two areas. Our lack of firepower on the bench certainly told later on in the game, and we simply could not do anything about it. We had some brave performers in our pack but we ran out of steam."

The Knights' numbers will be boosted next week by the returns of cup-tied duo Johnny Wainhouse and Richard Wilson, while fellow forward Dan Briggs will again test his hamstring injury.

As regards new injuries, Nathan Graham suffered a foot problem and Simon Friend a bang to the head, but neither is expected to be out next week, while in excellent news for the club, loose-forward Damian Ball could be back from his ankle injury early next month, as opposed to late-August as initially feared.

As for yesterday's defeat, Agar said: "I did not think we deserved for one minute to be on the end of a 32-0 scoreline, but while we had some very brave players we had some who simply under-performed on the big stage.

"We got off to a disastrous start but for the rest of the half we played well, though the try by Frank Watene was a terrible try to let in.

"We had a lot of possession but I was disappointed with what we did with it, but credit Hull KR's defence."

It was the first time the Knights have failed to score this season and the Knights coach added: "I thought we were poor in the final third. They defended with an awful lot of commitment but I did feel we probably handed things on a plate to them at times. There was some good approach play, good build-up, but in the final ten or 15 metres we were very poor."

Updated: 10:35 Monday, June 28, 2004