YORK City Knights head coach James Ford was left ruing what might have been as side this season as they finished their home campaign with a 32-22 victory over London Broncos.

Despite the narrow nature of the scoreline, York were in control for long periods against London, with the visitors capitalising in the final dozen minutes but largely second-best to the Knights.

As a result, York ensured they closed the season with home wins over Widnes Vikings, Whitehaven and London, all of whom finished about them in the Betfred Championship.

After a season marked by injuries through the spine of the team, does James Ford now feel a sense of what might have been in 2021?

“Absolutely,” he replied. “I think that we have won 50 per cent of our games this season against Championship opposition.

“We’ve lost five games by seven points or less. We’ve had more half-backs and hookers than anyone could have foreseen. And we’ve had more disruption on top of that.

“And we’ve missed out by fine margins. We need to learn some lessons from this year.

“But it’s not an absolute reboot (needed) because we weren’t far away.

“I don’t actually think our scores for and against across the division were that dissimilar from 2019.

“We’ve just been on the other side of some tight score lines.”

The win over London saw a number of retiring and departing players feature in what is set to be their final matches.

Ryan Atkins, Danny Washbrook, Sam Scott, James Green will all either leave or retire shortly, but Ford reserved special praise for long-serving former captain Tim Spears.

“He’s been absolutely central to everything that we’ve done and the progress that we’ve made," he said.

"I’m not sure what he’s doing next year with his commitments with work and some studies, but if he’s not here, I’ll be gutted and I’m sure that everyone else would be.

“Tim has done a fair bit off the field this year, that was always the plan. But it’s just whether he can afford to commit the time (next year), because he’s got a young family.

“He does commit a lot of time to keep himself in good condition, that’s obvious. I’ll have a discussion with him and see what comes from that.”