YORK KNIGHTS head coach Andrew Henderson is hopeful of a reaction from his side when they travel to Betfred Championship leaders Featherstone Rovers on Sunday (3pm).

Henderson's charges were lacklustre against strugglers Whitehaven at the LNER Community Stadium last weekend, and were duly penalised for their errors, falling to a 12-14 defeat.

Featherstone are the only side to remain unbeaten in the Championship so far this season, and have won their last eight home meetings against the Knights, a run that stretches back to York's 22-16 Northern Rail Cup victory in 2006.

Read next:

Henderson's side will undoubtedly have to perform close to their best to come away from West Yorkshire with a share of the spoils, and he hopes that last weekend's defeat will serve as a lesson for his squad.

"You go into a game with the wrong mentality, you'll come unstuck," he stated. "It's as simple as that.

"It was a very, very disappointing performance from us as a team and we take full responsibility for that. We weren't good enough.

"I felt that we were making some decent steps forward and progress as a team. Three wins on the bounce. Were they the most polished wins? No, but we understand what we've had as a group.

"We've lacked that bit of continuity, which I fully understand, but that certainly isn't an excuse for for the level of performance that we displayed on Sunday.

"For me, that was unacceptable from a York Knights standard. The players understand that, they accept that, and they addressed that as a group.

"We have to ensure that that doesn't happen again.

"One thing I did say to the playing group is if we're ever in this position again, and we have maybe had a little bit of a run of form and we're coming up against a team where we feel we should be winning, or should be at home and expected to win because we're going in as favourites, then we can just remind ourselves about that wide open game.

"If you're going with the wrong mentality or the wrong attitude, and just think you're going to get the job done, you'll come a cropper. That's what happened to us on Sunday.

"I feel we got what we deserved on Sunday and it was a harsh lesson, a disappointing one at that.

"It won't define our season and the the reality is now we need a response and we need to bounce back this week against a very good Featherstone side."

Henderson's preparation will not change ahead of the match, as he is a firm believer in what he is building at York.

"The thing for me is you don't go away from what you've been doing," he admitted. "That's the key thing.

"Everything we've already got planned and prepared for this week stays the same. We don't try and think about reinventing the wheel or or trying to do anything drastically different because we we believe in what we're doing.

"We believe in the process we have in place, we believe in the the sort of ethos that we we've instilled within this team, so nothing needs to change.

"It was the mentality that led us down. It wasn't the fact that the the plan was wrong, or that the process that we look to follow each week was wrong. So we don't need to drastically make too many changes there.

"Obviously we need to practise certain things that we want to execute on the on the weekend.

"We can get that now in training, but in terms of how we approach things, it doesn't change. We need to have that consistency there, and that's what we believe works.

"We've just go to go there and deliver it."