VICTORIOUS boss Dave Woods lauded his side – and his pack in particular – after watching them end an up-and-down week on a huge high.

The Knights shocked second-placed Batley 18-10 at Huntington Stadium last night to climb further away from the drop zone in the Co-operative Championship.

It made it two wins from two after Sunday’s last-ditch victory at Dewsbury and brought to an end a bad few days for the club, following the broken thumb injury to organiser-in-chief Chris Thorman, and the fact mystery now surrounds the future of hooker/half-back Paul Stamp after he refused to play for the reserves in Thursday night’s defeat at Keighley.

The Press understands Stamp – a regular last season but with only three appearances this term, his last coming in March – had expected a call-up to last night’s first team in place of Thorman. The official line from the club, from general manager Ian Wilson, was they expected him to be at training as normal on Tuesday.

Woods spoke only about last night’s match and his side’s performance – and the fact they avenged a big defeat at Batley in May.

“We didn’t get much respect when we played there,” he said. “For them to say they bombed a lot and could’ve made it a lot bigger scoreline I was thought was disrespectful.

“The boys wanted to prove something. They’ve been improving over the last few weeks. Our forwards were outstanding and I think we bashed them up a bit. They’ve maybe not been used to that and we ended up getting the result because of it.

“We worked really hard in training on closing down (Batley half-back) Paul Handforth. He’s their main playmaker and I saw him looking across to the bench a couple of times – we were just making it really tough for him.

“Then when Paul Mennell (Batley’s other half-back) went off (injured) they didn’t have much creativity. We kept ‘Tiger’ (Handforth) out of the game a fair bit and that helped us get the result.”

Woods denied it was the complete display performance he has been calling for, but was nonetheless a proud man. “It was pretty short of the 80-minute performance – we still came up with some sloppy mistakes and cheap turnovers.

“But we didn’t have to stop that try at the end – we could’ve let them score and we still would’ve won – but that showed commitment, and I was proud of them.

“Our scrambling defence was great and when we did come up with an error with the ball, we made up for it with our defence.”

Woods also praised the noise made by the Huntington Stadium faithful.

He said: “The supporters were great again with the backing they gave us and the boys really do thrive on it.”