AUSSIE ace Mark Stewart declared 'the monkey is off his back' after his two tries helped York City Knights to a stunning victory over Chorley on Sunday.

And he reckons the triumph has boosted belief in the Huntington Stadium camp that they can overcome their injury problems and win promotion from National League Two.

The 23-year-old centre, who made a winning debut against Workington last week, scored his first touchdowns for the club in Sunday's 36-32 victory, which secured York a play-off place ahead of Friday's home clash with Hunslet and means a win that night would guarantee them a home tie in the first knock-out round.

"I was pleased to get them - it's got the monkey off my back," he said of his two copycat tries which followed chips to the corner by Danny Brough.

"With the first, me and their winger both got our hands on the ball and I snatched it off him and put it down. The second one I just caught it.

"It was great to score, but the win was definitely more important.

"It's definitely given us more confidence. We've beaten the team that were coming first and that's given people a lot more belief that we can win the competition and get promoted."

Stewart, who is hoping to secure a deal to keep him with the Knights next season, added: "As they were first, the win puts the competition more open. There's nothing between the top six or seven teams in the competition so it's a case of who plays well on the day - and we proved we can do that.

"The team spirit is good. After the loss at Swinton (two weeks ago), everyone was down but we knew what we had to do to fix the problem.

"We improved probably 60 per cent on last week and hopefully we can take it up another notch next week and raise the bar each game after that. It needs to be lifted pretty high come the play-offs to win those games."

Updated: 10:57 Tuesday, September 02, 2003