"WE'RE in this together and we have to get out of it together."

That was the blunt message from head coach Mick Cook after his York City Knights side crashed out of the Northern Rail Cup at the quarter-final stage to continue their disappointing run of results.

The Knights lost 28-16 to Workington, the only National League Two side left in the competition, and the defeat, coupled with a winless start to life in National League One - which won't get any easier with full-time big-guns Leigh Centurions lying in wait next week - sees the pressure mount on reigning NL2 Coach of the Year Cook.

But he said the whole club would work as one to put things right. "It's a big disappointment for everybody - the players and the staff," he said.

"You can't fault the work ethic (in the team) - that's there all the time - but the work sometimes is in the wrong direction."

Cook has long called for his team to put in a full 80-minute performance but again they were victims of a poor opening and, while they fought back to equalise after half-time, they could not keep it up.

"What we served up yesterday was not good enough to get us into the semi-final and won't be good enough to win us any league points either," he stated.

"Overall it was patchy. We played well only in small periods and we gifted them a lot of piggy-backs out of their half, in the first half especially.

"We played most of the first half inside our own half and it's a difficult game to play when you do that.

"We got back into a winning position at 16-all - we pressured them and they were starting to crack a bit. The interception try (which saw Town go back in front) was one of those things and while it knocked us around a bit, I still thought we had enough to come back. But a few poor decisions by us, like squeezing the ball out, let us down and our tactical kicking, regarding our attacking kicks and building pressure, let us down again."

Peter Fox brought York their only bright point of the first period with a superb individual try but limped off with a dead leg suffered midway through the half.

The Knights crossed twice more in the second half but Cook said they should have had more.

"We opened them up enough times but the ends of our sets were again poor with kicks not getting through or going dead and building no pressure. It was not enough to break them down."

Updated: 08:36 Monday, May 08, 2006