YORK City Knights head coach Richard Agar appears in line to leave Huntington Stadium at the end of the season to take up the assistant's role at Hull FC.

Agar told the Evening Press ten days ago he had had no contact with the Super League outfit but he has now confirmed that the Airlie Birds have since made an official approach.

Talks have only been tentative, with the two parties yet to thrash out a deal, but the Press believes a move to the KC Stadium now seems probable, with Agar the Airlie Birds' top choice to become John Kear's number two next season once he replaces the departing Shaun McRae in the Hull hot-seat.

Agar would not say how likely the move was at this stage, but stressed his commitments this season would remain firmly on the Knights' promotion challenge.

"Hull have approached York and (chief executive) Steve Ferres has given me permission to speak to them with a view to becoming John Kear's assistant next season," Agar told the Press.

"It's very flattering and I don't know many people who wouldn't consider it."

But he added: "As far as I'm concerned it doesn't affect anything that we're trying to achieve this year.

"I've got more important things on my plate at the moment (than the proposed move to Hull) and that's York. I'm more concerned about what's going on here. Actually, I might end up out of a job here before that kicks in."

Those concerns mounted last night as the Knights' losing run - which has coincided with the rumours surrounding interest from Hull - stretched to four games with a 27-14 defeat at promotion rivals Sheffield.

Agar afterwards admitted the Knights' hopes of automatic promotion were now severely dented, and he was clearly unhappy with the display.

"I said beforehand it was a must-win game and it was. With four losses I'd say it's now an outside bet that we'll finish top. We simply can't afford to lose again and even then it's an outside bet."

He added: "The way we're playing we need to think about consolidating our play-off place.

"We've got a lot of talkers in this team at the moment. We've talked about going forward and playing controlled rugby but we coughed up about 12 sets in the first half. There are people talking the talk but not walking the walk.

"Our second-half performance was better but we ran out of gas - and that was probably down to the amount of tackling we'd had to do in the first half. We gave good field position away time after time.

"We try to deflect it away from the players but at the moment I'm struggling to contain it I'm so angry.

"I was expecting a good performance from us last night, I'd had some good vibes in training. We started well but I'm just amazed at the amount of possession and position we managed to squander."

Updated: 10:25 Saturday, July 24, 2004