THE gods are not smiling at all on York City Knights, even if the buoyant team are doing everything in their power to reach Rugby League's nirvana.

Sunday's conquest of Featherstone Rovers to squeeze into the Powergen Challenge Cup last eight bordered on the miraculous.

Against all odds, which included barely having a full-strength team to even start the duel, the clock ticked down to an enthralling encounter at the Lionheart Stadium to eventually afford the Knights with a great chance of tying the score and taking the tie into extra time.

But the bold men in blue and white spurned any thought of extending the action. Instead, they opted to run the ball, a ploy the courageous nature of which yielded a match-winning try to propel them into the hat alongside the Super League titans of St Helens, Wigan Warriors and Hull.

But the Knights' reward for such endeavour and inspirational grit proved to be a heart-sagging quarter-final trip to Huddersfield Giants.

True, the setting is the magnificent McAlpine Stadium, and equally true, the hosts currently share the same points billing at the head of the Super League alongside Leeds Rhinos, Bradford Bulls and St Helens by virtue of winning their first two games of the league campaign.

But when a cup collision beckoned against the Saints or the Warriors from Lancashire's heartland - especially if it had dragged them across the Pennines to York and in turn attracted the glare of live and lucrative television coverage - to have that hope dashed away and replaced by a short hop down the M62 to West Yorkshire was a fate utterly undeserved for York's spirited knights of the renaissance.

If not quite a kick in the teeth, the draw did temporarily prompt the palpable sense of being under-whelmed. The immediate consensus was that here was a tie that would surely end in defeat for the Knights and in front of a crowd to boot that would be so modest as to not even offer the consolation of major much-needed cash for the Knights' treasure chest.

But ahh-ha, as the vapid Alan Partridge might chirrup, who's to say the Knights' Challenge Cup road will not yet negotiate the McAlpine Stadium and beyond.

The way the Knights have tackled the current season in which they have already surpassed the excellence of last term, their chances of downing the Giants should not be under-rated. New coach Richard Agar has taken the platform established by predecessor Paul Broadbent and forged a bond of team spirit stronger than any concrete. This team just don't know when they are beat.

Intoxicating evidence of that was lapped up in gallons by the 600-plus fans who made the crusade to cheer on the Knights' leonine exploits at the Lionheart Stadium.

In flattening Featherstone - a team desperately seeking revenge for a previous week's defeat at York - the Knights displayed conviction, commitment and character, qualities that have coursed through the 2004 term so far.

If they can again summon commendable reserves of fortitude, then the Knights could produce a shock and roar into the semi-finals thereby repeating the feat of 1984 when the last four was reached by York RLFC, as they were then known, only to bow out to Leeds at Elland Road.

It's always been the stuff of fairy-tales that knights slay giants. Let's hope another tall tale comes to pass.

SPEAKING of tall stories. Few would have given any credence to the notion that England would win the first Test in the West Indies in such an emphatic fashion.

The decisive fourth day when England sealed an historic triumph at Sabina Park was more like a football match. It barely took England 90 minutes to polish off the Caribbean for a record low score of 44 before then smiting the 20 runs needed for a thumping ten-wicket triumph.

Hero of the hour and a half was Durham County Cricket Club paceman Steve Harmison. He decimated the West Indies' second innings with a 7-12 haul - the best by any bowler at Sabina Park where so many legends have strutted their stuff in the Test arena.

However, as England skipper Michael Vaughan warned, there is no more fierce an opponent than a creature wounded on their own turf. The West Indies may well want to keep out of Harmison's way, but they will be determined to bounce back with a vengeance in the second Test, which starts in Trinidad on Friday.

Updated: 09:37 Tuesday, March 16, 2004