JAMES FORD couldn’t find fault in the effort of his York City Knights side despite a disappointing start to their campaign.

The team lost 22-10 to Toulouse Olympique in round one of the Betfred Championship season.

By the hour mark, York led 10-6 against one of the division’s only two full-time sides and held the numerical advantage too after Lloyd White was sent off.

The sending off seemed to give Toulouse some renewed hope and with nine minutes left they regained the lead.

York managed to conjure one final chance in the dying stages when Jubb threw a flat pass to Joe Porter metres from the line, though the prop lost the ball as he took the pass.

And with seconds left, Toulouse added to their lead, taking the scoreline to a slightly flattering one.

While Ford felt his side lacked the sufficient quality going forward, he had no complaints about their work.

“I can’t fault the boys’ effort,” he told BBC Radio York.

“I thought that defensively in the large we were very good on an enormous field against a very good side, such as Toulouse.

“Ultimately we’ve not won the game because we weren’t quite good enough with the ball.

“We’re working at it. We’ll stick together and we’ll keep working at it. And we’ll use that as a platform.

“Rugby is a tough game and there’s going to be five or 10errors in a game.

“And it was unfortunate that we made ours in the back end (of the game).

“If you make them in the first 20 (minutes), people don’t remember them.

“But, you’ve got to look at it with some balance.

“Without mentioning any names, there were a couple of defensive errors and a couple of attacking errors. There’s no blame being attached for that.

“Top quality Championship-winning sides make errors, but they work hard enough to defend them.

“The endeavour was there, we just weren’t quite good enough to keep on repelling Toulouse.

“If you compare that effort with the performance against Toronto last year, we were equally as good defensively.

“But, we were much further on with the ball. And, we didn’t do too badly last year.

“We’ll keep our heads down, keep together, keep working hard and see where we go.”

York were without half-back Connor Robinson for the latter stages of the game after he came off with a knee injury.

Robinson will miss the round two clash against Bradford Bulls through suspension.

However, boss Ford said he was hopeful he won’t miss too much further action.

“It’s not good to pick up any injuries, certainly at half-back,” Ford added. “He’s our vice captain and goal kicker.

“But he’s a very robust young man and he hasn’t missed many games through injury and he does recover pretty quickly.

“So fingers crossed that that will be the case this time.”