YORK RUFC recovered from a shaky start to crush Acklam and maintain their challenge for play-off qualification in Yorkshire One.

Lee Denham’s side had trailed by seven points until Marc Benson crashed over the line with 20 minutes gone.

It was one way traffic after that as York scored a further 56 points without reply to record their second biggest victory of the season.

York’s biggest win of the season is a 68-8 victory over Acklam at Clifton Park in October.

Chris Fox and Toby Atkin returned to the side, at second-row and scrum-half respectively. Liam Hessay played at fly half with Neil McClure at full back. Tom Woffendin started on the wing and Will Atkin moved to outside-centre.

Acklam, who are bottom of the table after stepping out of the Durham and Northumberland League this season, stunned promotion chasing York by taking the lead courtesy of a John Garton try. Full back Daniel Ashton kicked the conversion.

Neil McClure’s conversion levelled the contest after Benson had gone over the line for York.

After 30 minutes, a York scrum was powering forward when the referee awarded a penalty. Scrum-half Toby Atkin was quick to realise that it was a free-ball and spread play to the back-line. After a few phases, a maul was set up with nine York players pushing. Campbell Thomson scored and McClure converted, 7-14.

Shortly after the game re-started, York secured possession and Atkin’s box-kick was chased by Hugh Nicholson, putting pressure on the Acklam defence.

Two home defenders collided gifting Nicholson the opportunity to score; the conversion was good. 7-21.

McClure missed a long penalty kick just before half-time and the score remained 7-21.

York’s back-line found space after the interval. McClure committed his defender and fed the ball to Will Atkin who was clean through and showed good pace to score, McClure converted, 7-28.

After10 more minutes, York won a penalty, kicked to touch, secured the line-out to set up a driving maul and Will Norris scored. The conversion from out-wide was successful. 7-35.

More good York passing saw Nicholson claiming his second try. Hessay passed along the York back-line and Nicholson chose a good line at pace and against the flow of the defence to score. The conversion was good, 7-42.

The York attack was extremely effective and McClure finished a back’s move with 15 minutes to go before missing the conversion, 7-47.

From the re-start, Toby Atkin showed good pace and made a clean break. Thomson gave support and scored. The conversion was good. 7-54.

York rotated their front-row with Darren Rutherford replacing Russ Bowers at hooker and James Hartley replacing Dan Coe at prop-forward.

The final try of the game went to York.

Acklam were on the attack but mishandled the ball under pressure. Will Atkin collected and ran 70 metres to score; the conversion was good. Final score: Acklam 7 York 61.