YORK born and bred star Jonny Liddell will ignore home-city loyalties tomorrow night and put his all into securing a defeat for York City Knights.

Liddell, the former York Acorn protg who played for York Wasps last season, has since been earning his corn at South Leeds Stadium and tomorrow will come with his Hunslet Hawks team to take on the Knights at Huntington Stadium in the final match of the National League Two regular season (ko 7.30pm).

Both teams have already qualified for the promotion play-offs but tomorrow's result will determine who finishes fourth in the table to obtain home advantage at the first stage of the knockout series, and Liddell reckon it will be a crucial contest.

"I think its a really big game," said the youngster, who still lives and works in the Minster city.

"Both sides are in the play-offs but we're both playing for home advantage and I think that can make a big difference.

"It's the business end of the season and you need to be winning games regardless of whether your safely in the top six or not. You don't want to be losing at this time of the year because you've got to take some form into the play-offs."

Liddell revealed he still has a fondness for his home-town club, but was determined to put one over on them tomorrow and go on to help Hunslet win promotion.

"I still speak to all the lads (at York) and it's good to see them doing well," he said. "I would be cheering them on if it wasn't us they were playing."

Liddell, who was used mainly as a stand-off in his short time at Huntington Stadium, has proved his worth in several positions for Hunslet, having also been used at hooker, scrum-half, loose-forward and more recently full-back.

"I don't mind that as it shows I've got utility value," he said. "I've been enjoying it (with Hunslet). It's going well and they're a good set of lads."

He added: "If we play to our full potential we've got a good chance of going up. Overall, I think this season has been a success. If you look back to our Challenge Cup run, we knocked out Huddersfield and we've also beaten National League One teams in the Arriva Trains Cup.

"We've had bad patches at times but hopefully we can hit the form of when we beat Huddersfield and go on to do well."

Updated: 10:57 Thursday, September 04, 2003