HEAD coach James Ford dismissed the notion that Cumbria held a hoodoo over York City Knights – despite seeing his team’s nine-match winning run in Betfred League One end at Whitehaven.

The home side came from 18-8 down at half-time to win 26-18, leaving Ford still seeking his first win in this North West county in seven years as either a player or coach with the Minster city team.

The Knights as a club are now yet to win at the Recre in five attempts since re-forming in 2003, and have won only three times in 19 league visits to the Cumbrian coast as a whole since 2005, the last success coming nine years ago.

The result saw York slip to second in the table, Bradford going back to the summit.

“Coming to Cumbria is no different to going to Doncaster or North Wales or anywhere,” said Ford when asked of that jinx.

“It’s a bus journey, you get off the bus, then do your warm-up and you play the game.

“It’s nothing to do with Cumbria. I wish we were coming back here next week.

“We just weren’t smart enough. For one reason or another we did not have enough ball.

“The spirit was there – there was effort and fight – but we just weren’t good enough on the day.”

The Knights’ woes were compounded by losing strike centre Jake Butler-Fleming to a suspected pectoral tear. It is unclear how long he will be out for, but it could be long-term.

The reshuffle forced by the Aussie’s early exit brought more “adversity” to a side already down to one half-back. They also had Joe Batchelor harshly sin-binned in the second half, after Haven’s equalising try.

Said Ford: “We had a hooker (Will Jubb) at centre and it compounded a large reshuffle already.

“But we had a crack. The effort was there and we never gave in. We worked really hard, but just weren’t smart or good enough.

“Whitehaven played pretty well and they deserved to win so congratulations to them. We need to be better than that – and we will be.”

Asked about the experiment of deploying player/assistant-coach Graeme Horne, normally a prop, at half-back, Ford admitted: “It was not as effective as we had hoped.”

On the game as a whole he went on: “We did not give ourselves a chance. We put ourselves under a lot of pressure.

“We showed desire to resist that pressure but in the end it was too much.

“We showed grit to hang in there, but when one side gets all the ball, it’s going to have an influence on the result.

“We should not have been in that situation if we had played smarter.

“At 18-8 up at half-time we should manage the game. But we came up with a couple of soft contacts… in the second half we were off, certainly.

“It’s hard when you don’t have the ball. I think we had 11 sets in the second half and eight penalties against us.

“Some of the decisions – yes, they were penalties, but we probably could have had a couple of our own.

“The sin-binning didn’t help.

“But I promised not to give in to referees this year. We just have to be smarter.”

The penalty count ended 14-3 in Haven’s favour, while another key decision occurred with York 18-12 up and looking to relieve pressure. Whitehaven winger Dave Thompson dropped a kick near his own line, only for referee Tom Crashley to deem the ball went backwards, with Haven going up the other end and equalising.

On Crashley, Ford said: “I think both teams were a bit of a mess in the ruck and there could have been penalties either way. He made an effort to get the game to flow. But 14-3 looks a bit harsh and he missed that knock-on from a kick-catch.”

Asked if that was crucial in the final outcome, he added: “You see them given every week. It certainly had an impact – us having a scrum on their line or them going the length of the field and scoring.”