YORK Knights head coach Andrew Henderson has explained his decision to include five York-raised talents in his squad to face Toulouse Olympique tomorrow evening (6pm).

AJ Towse, Myles Harrison, Brad Ward, Ben Barnard and Harry Price will all travel to the south of France this weekend after being included in Henderson’s squad.

The Knights will be looking to record back-to-back Betfred Championship victories following an impressive 32-16 triumph against Bradford Bulls at the LNER Community Stadium on Monday night, a match which also saw the first competitive tries for Josh Daley and Jon Luke Kirby following their off-season moves to the club.

Toulouse will be a tough test for the Knights, however, with the French club currently in pole position for an immediate return to the Betfred Super League, having followed up a 4-24 win at Barrow Raiders on the opening weekend with a 58-0 thrashing of Newcastle Thunder last weekend at the Stade Ernest-Wallon.

Explaining his decision to include the young quintet, Henderson admitted that he much preferred to give his younger players the chance to prove themselves rather than bringing in anybody new.

“I’ve got eight players out currently with injury, one suspended, and one player won’t be able to go to France for personal family reasons, so we are left with 17 players,” he said.

“I had an option this week, a decision to make. I could have gone down the route of looking at dual reg, bringing in some bodies to booster things, but I wanted to give an opportunity to the guys that have been honest and have worked hard throughout this pre-season and been waiting for an opportunity.

“We’ll have five young York players that are York local lads that have come through the local amateur clubs in this area that are going to get the opportunity to go to the south of France and be part of this great team.

“As a club, we are on this journey of developing ourselves to become a Super League club, and part of that development journey is giving young local players opportunities.

“We want to inspire the local community and we want to inspire the next generation of local players as we grow as a club and we start to develop that other side of the club, which is to get those youth development structures in place.

“We’ve already got opportunities now where we’re taking players from the local game and getting them into our system and giving them opportunities to play first team rugby league.

“I’m really excited, and I’m proud of that, too, that we’ve got those young players getting this chance.

“I’d rather give them that opportunity this week and see where they’re at, and we can make some decisions off the back of that in regards to their development plans moving forward, rather than going and bringing someone in just for a week.

“We will get a couple of bodies back next week, so I just thought there’s no point disrupting the apple cart by bringing in a couple of bodies that you don’t know much about them anyway, and how motivated will they be to come and play for you?

“I’d rather put the trust in the current playing group who know by our systems, who know what we want to build here, what we represent.

“I’ve got every confidence that those young guys will deliver for us.

“I’m really excited to see them, and I’m really excited to see how they get on.

“They’ve got some other good players in our squad to help and support them, so we’re going to go there with the mentality to deliver what we need to and make sure that we get some consistency in our performance, and ultimately if we do that, then we give ourselves a chance.”