BOSS Mick Cook slammed York City Knights' defensive display yesterday as not befitting the club - but he was not overly anxious in the run-up to the National League Two season.

The Knights were beaten 52-14 at Hull KR, despite having been well in the game, just 6-4 down, two minutes before half-time.

Cook said the defence lacked toughness, but when asked if he was concerned by the result so close to the start of the league campaign, he said: "We're not really worried. We know we can play better and we've proved that."

The Knights remain third in the Northern Rail Cup group six but their hopes of progressing to the knockout stages were boosted by Featherstone's win at Sheffield. "I'm not interested in that," said Cook. "I'm interested in what we served up yesterday.

"We never got the ball in the second half. In 22 minutes we had six play-the-balls.

"In the first half, even though we weren't over-enthusiastic, we got them bucked quite a bit and we probably should have had a bit more from it.

"In the second half we needed to go out there and do the same again with probably a bit more composure but we never got the ball and when we did we turned it over. The result speaks for itself.

"We knew we could open them up and we did do - we made plenty of half-breaks, although we lacked a bit of support at times.

"But against teams like this, when you make chances you've got to make the most of them.

"They started the second half more sprightly and put us under a lot of pressure and got lots of tries.

"I was disappointed with our defensive work, which was soft at times."

York only had one training session to prepare to play the full-timers following the rearranged Challenge Cup tie in midweek.

Furthermore, Rob Spicer and Paul Clarke joined the long list on the treatment table following their head injuries in that game, and, while centre Neil Law's return was a big plus for Cook, the Knights lost yet another three-quarter, Mark Blanchard, to injury midway through the first half yesterday.

But Cook said: "I'm not looking for excuses and the players aren't either. We got beat fair and square."

Rovers also scored five tries while the Knights had a man in the sin-bin, taking the score from 6-4 to 32-4.

Cook recognized the ability in the Rovers camp but declared: "We have to be tougher than that. It's no excuse to concede all those points just because we're a man down.

"It's difficult if you're defending all the time, and Hull KR have got plenty of size and pace and they will punish you. But some of it (the defending) was pretty poor and not really acceptable for this club.

"We need to have a look at ourselves and pick it up next week against Featherstone."

Updated: 10:09 Monday, March 20, 2006