JAMES FORD has labelled York City Knights’ 30-year draught at Whitehaven as "irrelevant" as his side prepare to visit the Recreation Ground on Sunday (3pm).

York have failed to come away with a victory from any of their last 10 trips to Whitehaven, with Ryedale-York the last team to win at the Cumbrian club in 1992, by a 26-13 scoreline.

While history suggests that the Knights face a tough away day, head coach Ford insists that his sole focus is on the here and now.

“We need to play well, go there and focus on us,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of the last 10 games, but I know we don’t have a great record up there.

“They’ve gone, they’re irrelevant, we can’t do anything about them. We’ll focus on this game, get our preparation and journey right, get our energy right up there and aim at being a better version of York than we were against Widnes," he said of the narrow 16-14 win at the Vikings last time out.

“If we play to our level then we’ll give ourselves a real opportunity of being the first York team to win up there after 10 attempts.”

Since Whitehaven knocked York out of the Betfred Challenge Cup via a 38-12 hammering in March, they have won just twice since, beating the Betfred Championship's bottom two, Workington Town and Dewsbury Rams.

“I think Whitehaven are a good team, especially at their place," Ford assessed of the 11th-placed outfit, currently four points adrift of the relegation places.

“They’ve got some good individual players that offer some threat and some players have signed on loan recently that I’ve not seen a lot of.

“There’s a 6ft 8in back-rower from Catalan’s reserve side (Corentin Le Cam), a half-back (César Rougé) and a full-back (Luke Broadbent) as well from Warrington.

“There’s a little bit of unknown regarding those three. Whitehaven are going to come after us, they’re a big team, physical and don’t make many mistakes. We’re going to play better than we did against Widnes, that’s for sure.”

York have recalled Brendan O'Hagan, Ronan Michael and Levi Edwards to their squad, with Jacob Ogden, Danny Kirmond and Toby Warren dropping out.

York squad: Marsh, Brown, Glover, O'Hagan, Ellis, Matongo, Jubb, Teanby, Clarkson, Pauli, Thompson, Dixon, Stock, Harris, Harrison, Towse, Michael, Ward, Edwards, Antrobus, Porter.