MARK APPLEGARTH is ‘under no illusions’ of the threat that Batley Bulldogs pose to his York Knights side.

The York Head Coach has played against Batley many times in his illustrious career in rugby league, with Applegarth admitting that he has a great deal of respect for his West Yorkshire counterparts.

A hugely-impressive victory over promotion-chasers and AB Sundecks 1895 cup finalists Sheffield Eagles last week sees Batley in eighth position, level on points with the Knights and on the brink of the play-offs.

Applegarth remains wary of the Bulldogs in Sunday’s return to the LNER Community Stadium (3pm), with York keen to back up their impressive win at Toulouse Olympique seven days prior.

“We’re under no illusions that we need to bring our best game to be within a shout of getting anything on Sunday,” Applegarth told BBC York.

“I’ve played at Batley myself and know exactly what you get from them.

“They bat well above their weight every single year in the Championship, for me Batley are a proper Championship team.

“They will properly throw it at you and have got their own DNA now on how they want to play, they never go away and are always there or thereabouts.

“We’re expecting a very tough game, they’ve got some excellent players in their ranks and I’ve played with a few of them, [Adam] Gledhill, Leaky [Alistair Leak] and Blakey [Luke Blake] so I know exactly what they can do.

“Mocko [Mark Moxon], their coach, actually coached me so I think that he is a very smart coach and knows his rugby inside out.

“We’re expecting a very tough game, they’ve very similar to us as you can see on the scoreboard, we’re two evenly matched teams and it should make a good game for the neutral, all being well.

“We’re just focusing on controlling what we can, which is how we perform, how we train and how we apply ourselves.

“Come Sunday, it should be a good game.”

Applegarth also believes that his Knights side have grown a lot in recent weeks, primarily after their defeat against Halifax Panthers, and he feels that have taken in a lot of positive experiences.

“They’re a good bunch, they know a lot of it themselves and we’ve got some real good leadership in our group.

“I think that we learned a good lesson against Halifax. Halifax played really well that week and we were off the boil on certain things.

“I thought we started excellent and it lulled us into a bit of a false sense of security. Halifax burned us on that.

“You learn from experiences and it’s really important that we learn that we can’t rest on our laurels after a good win on Sunday. It resets and it’s back to both teams fighting for an equal thing.

“You’ve got to earn that right to grind those wins and Batley will be saying the same.

“They’re a team in form at the moment, they’ve picked up some really good wins and especially in that last win against Sheffield, who I thought that they completely outplayed.”