JAMES FORD has said that the effort his York City Knights side put in was “mixed” following their convincing 50-22 defeat at London Broncos.

York were more than matching London in a first half which they finished by trailing 20-10, having created several chances and applied plenty of pressure to the Broncos' line.

Full-time London showed their class after the break and reached a half-century of points through a combination of their free-flowing attacking rugby and some lacking defence from the Knights.

The result means that York remain just above the Betfred Championship relegation places and on a run of six straight league defeats.

“It’s disappointing,” said the head coach. “We came here confident that we could get the job done.

“We had a good week of preparation, we had clarity about what our plan was and what we wanted to do.

“And I’ve just not recognised what was on the field. We made too many simple individual errors at the start of the game, we missed one-on-one tackles that led to tries, we kicked the ball fairly poorly, then when we had possession and territory, we didn’t look slick enough with the ball to to post enough points.

“The mitigation around that was far less today because we had players out there today in positions that they are more accustomed to. It’s very disappointing.”

Speaking about the effort shown by his team, Ford added: “I think that the effort across the 17 was mixed and the standard across the 17 was mixed.

"At this level of rugby league, if you have two or three players well below par, as we saw today, you get burnt.

“It is (tough to take). The coaching staff put in an incredible amount of effort and detail into our preparations and it’s disappointing how it seems to go in one ear and out of the other for some people.

“I believe in the coaching staff, I believe in myself and we’ve got to fight our backsides off and get through this situation as positively as possible and reassess once we’re there.”

The game had started in positive fashion for Ford’s team as Perry Whiteley and Will Jubb both came close to scoring before London’s attack punished York.

Ford said: “We did have enough opportunity with the ball in their 20 but I just don’t think that we asked the right questions. We were asking some questions but not the right questions for that area of the field.”

On the second half, he continued: “We made individual errors with the ball, we missed tackles individually and we conceded some soft tries, which is really, really disappointing."