YORK City Knights jumped to second in the Kingstone Press League One table tonight after an unsurprisingly comprehensive 64-0 victory at South Wales Scorpions.

It might only be a temporary rise with North Wales Crusaders and Keighley able to go back above them tomorrow, but North Wales host leaders Oldham and the Cougars meet Newcastle – all four teams having promotion aspirations - so at least two of the Knights’ rivals will drop points.

It will all make for a good weekend all round for the club after the breakthrough on Friday in the community stadium negotiations, which will give head coach James Ford and his troops a home at long last.

Tonight’s victory, on the back of last week’s thrilling win over Newcastle, was pretty routine against a side who are struggling to compete in League One at all, let alone against a team bristling with confidence.

York had a long six-hour bus ride down to contend with but Ford was confident enough in his squad to leave five of last week’s star men at home, and those that came in duly gave him selection headaches for next week’s first-ever trip to Coventry Bears.

Among the incomers were Brad Hey, who made his debut off the bench and capped it with a superb break which set up a second try for Greg Minikin.

Nev Morrison had got the scoreboard ticking after six minutes, with Minikin soon showing his class to notch his first.

A Pat Smith grubber against a post created a try for Brad Nicholson, before replacement hooker Kriss Brining – hat-trick hero last week – scored one and set one up for Jonny Presley for a 28-0 interval lead.

A Tyler Craig solo try from half-way set the scoreboard going again after half-time, before Brining scored again from dummy-half and Hey streaked forward to send Minikin sprinting in.

A Presley jink and jive saw Ryan Mallinder make it 52-0 before the hour-mark.

A rare spell of home pressure saw Connor Farrer go close, held up by the sticks, but, like in the reverse clash in May, the Scorpions ended the game pointless.

Their frustration manifested itself in late nonsense which saw Jonny Leather sin-binned - foolishly being offside on his own try-line immediately after his side were warned for persistent offending – before Osian Phillips was deemed to have started an all-in fracas which saw both him and Ed Smith yellow-carded for punching.

At 11 against 12, Brining completed his second hat-trick in two weeks, James Haynes adding his ninth conversion, and Nicholson blasted through for his second try on the hooter, Ben Dent adding the final two.