York City Knights prepared for 'very tough' Super 8s fixture programme

Ford has previously slated the League One regular season fixtures, his team having had to travel to more of their main promotion rivals than they got at home – including their 34-28 defeat at Keighley Cougars in the last of those games today, in a match Ford’s men “should have won”.

As it turned out, they would have finished third in the table regardless of this result – being rewarded with four home ties in the Super 8s and three away as the top eight now battle for the top-five play-offs.

However, the convoluted fixture mechanism means that, rather than swap home advantage from the first section of the season, they must travel again to runaway leaders Toulouse, the full-time favourites for promotion, and old foes Keighley (6th), grand finalists last year, as well as second-placed Rochdale.

The home ties will be against Doncaster (4th), Barrow (5th) and outsiders Hunslet (7th) and London Skolars (8th).

The full schedule will be revealed on Wednesday, with the first Super 8s fixtures taking place in a fortnight.

Ford, who has already bemoaned in particular the need to go to France for a second time rather than get them at home, said: “Every game will be very tough.

“This result wouldn’t have a made a difference to our league position but we want to win every game and we wanted to pick up as many points as we can.

“It could have been easier but we can’t moan too much about finishing third after the fixtures we’ve had.

"It’s a reasonable achievement. We could have done better, yes. We should not have lost here and we shouldn’t have dropped a point against North Wales.

“Other than that we lost at Barrow with a weakened team and at Toulouse.

“It’s not the end of the world and we can find a couple of improvements in our performance here – we know we can be much better than that.”

He added: “We’ve played miles away from our potential and come within a whisper of beating a tough team.

“But to finish this part of the season three points above a team like Keighley isn’t bad – if you’d said that at the start of the season you’d have thought we’d be in the top two.”

On this latest performance, which followed last week’s defeat at Toulouse, Ford said: “I thought we were really brave.

“We put ourselves under an awful lot of pressure with individual errors, defensively and offensively, but we were tough and brave and gave ourselves three of four opportunities to win the game by a score or two.

“However, we didn’t take those chances and we were naïve enough to give Keighley more opportunities and they took one and the game was theirs.

“I thought contact-wise we were really good and limited Keighley’s yardage. I bet there are a few sore Keighley boys after that.

“But we found ways to lift the pressure off them and build pressure on ourselves instead.”

Having also lost a ding-dong iPro Sport Cup final to Keighley, Ford added: “We need to find a way to win games like this, not a way to lose them.

“To concede those breakaway tries – one from the kick-off and one from our grubber kick – we’ve got to be a bit more aware and more ruthless.

“Not taking anything away from Keighley – they found a way to beat us – but they were there for the taking if we had performed to our levels. We know we’re better than that.”

Ford also bemoaned the performance of referee Jamie Bloem, especially his interpretation of proper ruck speed. He had spoken to the man in the middle as the sides left the field at half-time.

He explained: “Offensively we were never allowed to generate tempo. I’m really disappointed with the bloke in charge of the game. He’s a decent fellow but that was as slow a game as when we play an expansion team.

“Referees are human and we’ve got no divine right to shout at them. I just said could he have a look at the ruck speed and have consistency in his ten metres.

“I do think he could be a really good referee. He’s got some distance to travel as we saw here but he can be very good.”