YORK City Knights will hit the road in the quarter-finals of the Northern Rail Cup.

The Knights travel to Workington on May 7 - the last National League Two team standing in the League Cup - having defeated Dewsbury Rams 20-14 care of a nail-biting finale.

Knights head coach Mick Cook said: "A home draw would have been nice but it's not to be - it's the luck of the draw.

"The good thing is that we've kept away from the likes of Hull KR, Widnes and Whitehaven so we will takes this with both hands."

Workington dished out two NL2 beatings to the Knights last season and have one of the most enviable home records in rugby league.

But Cook is confident of a positive outcome.

He said: "They've been a little bit indifferent this season, a bit up and down, so you expect a mixed bag going up there.

"We will approach it in the right manner and hopefully it will be third time lucky."

The manner of yesterday's win - secured by a 79th-minute Phil Hasty kick-chase after he and Jason Golden charged down a drop goal attempt with the scores at 14-14 - left a bitter taste in both Cook and his players' mouths with too many errors again making life harder than it had to be.

"Our guys are a little bit down with the win. They did a lot of hard work but they know that when we play Rochdale there will be no excuses next week.

"I thought we did a good job of blowing our own legs off," said Cook. "At 14 apiece we had three guys injured on the bench and were looking at extra time. It was only that great kick-chase by Golden ands Hasty that saved the day at the end.

"We are a good defensive team but unfortunately we just do too much of it. In two games we did nearly 600 tackles which is just too much.

"Unfortunately we turned over on the halfway line quite a lot and we had to defend well to hang in there." The last-ditch win may have come at a price though with three more names added to the injury list.

Jim Elston strained his left medial knee ligament and limped off with 35 minutes to go; Jamie Bovill re-aggravated his groin problem in probably his strongest performance to date in a Knights shirt; and Craig Farrell suffered a hamstring pull mid-way through a 30-yard line break.

Cook said; "We've got some blokes o come back - Adam Sullivan, Scott Rhodes and David Buckley - but it doesn't really help the size of our squad when you've got players coming back and others getting injured."

NORTHERN RAIL CUP

Quarter-final draw

Doncaster v Rochdale

Widnes v Leigh

Hull KR v Whitehaven

Workington v KNIGHTS

Ties to be played May 7

Updated: 10:24 Monday, April 24, 2006