YORK finished the North One East season sixth in the table having won exactly half of their 26 fixtures following a 24-22 home triumph over Driffield.

Sam Elliot grabbed the winning try having also crossed the line for the Clifton Park outfit along with Toby Atkin and Liam Hessay, with two of the efforts converted by the latter.

With promotion prospects and relegation fears affecting neither mid-table side, both appeared to have one eye on team building for next season.

York featured some promising rookies graduating from the youth section alongside experienced players who have committed many years to the club.

Freddie Potrykus started in the front-row with Evan Woodworth and Dan Coe, whilst Oscar Bell joined Lewis Hannibal and Shane Goulding in the back-row.

The two wings were Elliot and Rob Hodges with Davies at full-back.

A strong breeze benefited York in the first half, and they took the lead when scrum-half Atkin reliably sneaked over after a disrupted scrum.

Atkin continued to make positive metres around the edges of rucks and these forays set up a penalty kick for Hessay but the fly-half missed the difficult attempt, just as he had after the opening try,

Driffield, meanwhile, were happy to give the ball some air and, after a quickly-taken penalty, their Italian tight-head Alessandro Zavetti was too powerful to stop at full speed.

He went over beside the posts and full-back James Watts kicked the conversion to give the visitors the lead.

But Hessay was passing the ball well off his right hand as well as his naturally stronger left and, with this threat in mind, he dummied his pass after Driffield had committed to defending a driving maul deep in their territory.

That subsequently created space for him to step through the defence and score close to the posts and he converted his own try to give the hosts a half-time lead of 12-10.

Davies then ranged in space for 50 metres before he combined with Elliot to increase York’s lead a couple of minutes into the second half and Hessay kicked the extras.

The visitors struck back and, after taking consecutive tap penalties and nearly pushing over, the ball was passed through hands to Ed Farnsworth who scored in the corner.

Watts missed the conversion but had another opportunity a few minutes later when Driffield number-10 Ryan Murray kicked deftly over an onrushing York defence and the single bounce favoured centre John Soanes who ran in.

This time, Watts secured the two points to level the scores at 19-19.

Driffield then took the lead with only five minutes to go as Watts kicked a penalty.

But the season ended on a positive note for York after second-row Chris Fox collected from the restart to set up an attack.

The home side were subsequently awarded a penalty, which they eschewed in favour of the scrum.

After several phases on the Driffield goal line, Atkin passed long from the base of a ruck and, whilst he missed two deeper runners, he found the impressive Elliot for the match-winning try.