YORK City Knights have received an offer from Featherstone Rovers for star hooker Kriss Brining on the eve of the Kingstone Press League One season, The Press understands.

The Championship big-guns signed former Wakefield Trinity hooker Matty Wildie from Dewsbury in the off-season but have since seen the 24-year-old sidelined for at least a month with a knee injury, and they see Brining as an ideal replacement in the meantime and as someone to impact off the bench when Wildie returns.

The Knights would not confirm an approach had been made but Press sources say Rovers have offered a five-figure sum, plus profits from a future pre-season friendly fixture between the sides, plus a player in return. No names have been mentioned.

The clubs have been in negotiations this week and, while the Knights would not want to see one of their prize assets leave, they are believed to be close to agreement, should Brining want to go.

Brining is also thought to be considering the offer on the table at Post Office Road - which is likely to be a sizeable increase on his current deal with the lower-league Knights, which runs until the end of the 2016 season.

The Scarborough-born 22-year-old, a graduate of the old scholarship at Huntington Stadium, became the Knights’ then youngest-ever player when entering the field as a substitute in the Championship match at Widnes in April 2011, aged 17.

By the end of 2012 he had become a regular while still a teenager, and last season was arguably his best year yet, certainly on the try-scoring front, as he came out of the departed Jack Lee's shadows.

He racked up 23 touchdowns - including four hat-tricks - in only 19 appearances either side of a spell in the treatment room to finish the campaign as the club's top scorer.

In all, he has made 60 first-team appearances for York, scoring 32 tries.

Featherstone - seemingly with Luke Teasdale, who played nine times at hooker last year, now out in the cold - plugged the gap at dummy-half in Sunday's narrow win over Batley Bulldogs by using John Davies, the former Knights back-rower, in an unfamiliar role.