MARK APPLEGARTH ruled out any excuses from his York Knights players from not performing in Saturday’s overseas visit to Toulouse Olympique (6pm).

The Knights visit Toulouse on Saturday for their 20th match of the season, with the hosts eyeing promotion whilst being in second position on 27 points.

Applegarth is aware of the threat that Toulouse possess, but refused to prepare any excuses for his side to not produce a battling performance or to expect anything different at the Stade Ernest-Wallon.

“In my head, it’s not that much different,” Applegarth told BBC York.

“The difference is that you go 30,000 foot up in the air rather than go on a three or four hour bus journey.

“We go out Friday and come back Sunday, but we’re there to do business and I spoke to the lads about that.

“With it being a Saturday night game, it’s irrelevant. We’re semi-professional players, so I’d be disappointed if we did use that as a bit of an excuse to go for a holiday as I am definitely not seeing it like that.

"I’m pretty confident that the lads aren’t either. Toulouse had a nice physical display after Doncaster where they were excellent, we’re expecting the best version of them.

“We want to go and give our best foot forward as well, so we’ll be preparing as well as we can.

“We’ll be going over there and have a nice hotel, just outside of town, to prepare for a game on Saturday night.

“After the game on Saturday night, I’ll tell the lads to switch off and let their hair down, but I think we’ve got to be up and about for 6am so it’s a case of doing the job.”

Applegarth would go on to review the Toulouse season and speak on the progress that they have made after a shaky start, insisting that he is ‘under no illusions’ of the strength of the Knights opponents.

Applegarth analysed: “They took a while to get going but until that Doncaster game last week, they’d been on a pretty impressive unbeaten run, taking the league leaders Wakefield in that.

“They’re still a dangerous team, their back five get them going and they’ve got a big set of forwards, they play a nice, attractive brand of rugby.

“We’re under no illusions of what threat they’ve got, but we want them to know about us and what we can deliver.

“We’re going to be focusing on where we feel we can exploit them, and then obviously being able to match them physically where they are strongest. Hopefully it will be two good teams going at each other.”