YORK City Knights are determined to regain momentum in their title push after getting "a kick up the backside".

That was the view of coaching consultant Daryl Powell after watching the 44-28 loss at Workington, Knights' second defeat of the LHF National League Two season.

The result has not taken York off top spot - they remain ahead of Dewsbury on points-difference - but it has brought the Cumbrians right back in the mix, just two points behind alongside Swinton and Hunslet, those two points separating the top five at the half-way mark of the campaign.

Powell said: "We went there to get the points but weren't good enough. We want to be up near the top, keep some kind of momentum, but this was a kick up the backside and we need to get back on the horse and come up with improvement.

"At the end of the day you're going to lose some games. You've got to minimise those and be consistent. We've got a good bunch of players but at times you don't get everybody playing as well as they possibly can."

Head coach Mick Cook recovered from mumps sufficiently to join up with the squad at Derwent Park yesterday, but Powell (pictured left) had been in charge during the week with Cook in quarantine.

He added: "We will have to improve significantly. There were some good performances but in the main our standards were below where we had been. We had to be at our best to win but weren't. We have to make sure we put things right."

Workington thus avenged the 70-10 defeat in last year's play-offs and maintained their 13-month winning home run.

Powell said: "We knew it would be tough physically and it was.

"We conceded some tries that were a bit strange - there was one after a ball steal and they got some luck with the bounce. But them's the breaks. They created a lot of their own luck and we should have been wrapping those things up. They played exceptionally well and we didn't stick with them."

Powell reckoned York suffered in the forward exchanges but praised the efforts of substitute prop Yusuf Sozi. "He was superb," he said. "Him and David Bates stood up, but a number of our pack will be disappointed with their performances."

He added: "We didn't build any pressure at all. The times when we got field position we lost the ball on the first, second or third tackle. If you don't create pressure on teams like Workington, it will cost you.

"We expected they would tire and we got to them with two tries near the end of the first half. If we had maintained pressure they would have struggled but we weren't able to do that and as a result they were pretty fresh at the end."

Updated: 11:05 Monday, June 27, 2005