JAMES FORD has admitted to not having the desired impact as a coach on Sam Davis, who has returned to London Broncos on loan from York City Knights.

Davis departed York for his former club on a deal until the end of the season last week, having made just eight appearances from a possible 16 since joining from London during the off-season.

Even since Kriss Brining’s retirement in April, the 23-year-old has struggled to establish himself as the regular interchange hooker with number nine Will Jubb regularly completing 80 minutes.

“Sam Davis has got plenty of strengths to his game,” said Ford. “He’s got plenty of energy and he challenges people out of dummy half with his speed and strength.

“I just didn’t think that I’d had the impact on him that I wanted to as a coach in terms of helping him learn our systems.

“We love Sammy to pieces and he’s a great kid. But he needs to play. He’s come off the back of an ACL and he’s played eight games for us, with some of those minutes being quite short.

“The more he plays, the better he will get and hopefully he goes well at London.”

Expanding on not being able to have the desired impact on players as a coach, Ford added: “When I talk about lessons learnt from last year, there were times where I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall, going through things in different ways and trying to catch something in somebody.

“It probably resulted in me and a couple of other people not liking one another as their style of play was different to what I wanted it to be.

“The lesson to learn from that is there will be clubs who will be desperate for a hooker like Sammy.

“Why fall out when we get on really well? We can let him go out and be that energy bunny for London and Will Jubb can be a bit more of Cameron Smith for us.”

Davis’ departure leaves York with just one recognised hooker in their squad in Jubb in a move which defies the traditional trend of opting to have another nine on the bench.

“There’s no rule saying that you have to substitute your hooker,” Ford argued however.

“Will’s got the engine to do 80 minutes so we leave him out there for 80 minutes.

“And he’s just a really good player. His passing is good, he wins nearly all of his tackles, his organisation is good, he’s a very calm and composed person and he understands our systems.

“He’s just a really good player and we’re a better team with him on the field.”