YORK ACORN coach Josh Mortimer has hailed the club’s promotion to the NCL premier division as a “deserved achievement.”

Acorn headed into the final round of the division one season level on 31 points with Featherstone Lions, though they were trailing by 36 on points difference.

York recorded an incredible 88-0 thrashing over Dewsbury Moor, therefore leapfrogging Featherstone - who won 56-12 at Myton - into the final automatic promotion spot by a points difference of just eight.

The hosts recorded 17 tries in the victory, with three of them in the dying minutes proving crucial to their promotion, while Dewsbury had three players sent off and another three in the sin bin.

“It’s a brilliant feeling, I’m so happy,” beamed Mortimer. “Anybody that knows me,might say that I’m quite a miserable person to be around.

“But I’ve been sky high since Saturday, nothing’s got under my skin! I’ve been promoted before as a player and that felt good, but this feel even better.

“I felt like we got what we deserved in winning promotion. I say it quite often, but I do believe that we were the best side in the division this year.

“We messed up on three occasions, losing lower placed opposition. I think that if you asked the other 11 teams in the division who the best team in the league was, I’m more than confident that they’d pick us.”

Remarkably, the game was scoreless after the first 20 minutes, by which point Featherstone had already established a 24-0 lead.

“At that point, it didn’t look like it was on,” Mortimer admitted.

“Our vice chairman’s dad was up in Myton watching the Featherstone game.

"He was on the phone to us throughout the afternoon, texting us updates of their score.

"We spoke to the players through the week about whether they wanted to be updated about the Featherstone game, and they said that they didn’t want to be told, unless we needed a late drop goal.

“ Throughout the game, we were just telling the players to keep doing what they were going, to not do anything daft. Thankfully, Dewsbury self imploded, but we kept our cool.

“We just kept on doing what we were doing to put us in front and the boys just played some brilliant rugby league, the sort of play that we’ve been asked for them all year.

“We haven’t had too many 80 minute performances this season, I could only say we’ve had it in two games.

“Too often we’ve had blips in games, whether that be errors in possession or giving away penalties.

"But, on Saturday, they were brilliant. We made two or three errors, if that.

“We asked the boys to be ruthless and they certainly were. We have give our backs a pat on the back.”

The 88-0 scoreline they eventually racked up proved to be enough for promotion, though Mortimer did question the initial celebrations amongst his players.

“At the end of the game, we were listening over the phone,” he said.

“I haven’t done maths like that in a long time!

“Part of me was questioning it. Was our score correct? Were the updates over the phone right? Had we done out calculations right?

“Eventually, we worked out we’d done it.

“The lads went mental, everyone was jumping on each, it was brilliant.”