YORK City Knights coach Richard Agar has utilised a French connection to glean insider knowledge ahead of tomorrow's cross-Channel Challenge Cup tie, the Evening Press can reveal.

The Knights will be seeking a victoire at Huntington Stadium (ko 3pm) rather than another case of dja vu as they entertain French champions Villeneuve in the third round.

It will be the third time in four years that the Leopards have visited the Minster city in the Cup and they will be going for a hat-trick of wins having beaten York Wasps in 2001 and 2002.

But Agar, who has described the clash as "one of the ties of the round", was confident the Knights could exact revenge - aided by the fact he went on a spying mission to France last month.

He explained: "I went to UTC (another French team who are in this year's Challenge Cup) to spend three or four days with Steve Deakin (UTC's coach).

"It was not only to look at Villeneuve but also to have a look at the way UTC operate and discuss one or two things. I've seen two or three tapes of Villeneuve and I went through a bit of detail with Steve."

It will not be the first time Agar himself has come up against Villeneuve. He was player-assistant coach at Fea-therstone last season when Rovers won a controversial Cup tie, and although he did not play due to injury he "did a lot of work on them".

"It was a fiery, ill-tempered, ill-disciplined game," he said. "There were complaints from both sides and Featherstone suffered a lot of injuries in that game."

But he added: "Their team has changed a lot since then and I don't think that game will have much relevance tomorrow."

Nevertheless he has war-ned his troops to be on their guard. "They've got a couple of quality French internationals, hooker Vincent Wulf is a smart player and (player-coach) Brad Davis is pulling the strings," he explained.

"This is a big fixture for them, coming over here, and I'm expecting them to come out fired up. There's a lot of added interest with it being a French team and it would be nice to get a big crowd in."

Yorkshire League amateurs Sharlston provided the shock of the Cup so far this year when they beat the Knights' NL2 rivals Dews-bury 30-28 in front of 2,000 fans last night. Pro' clubs Oldham and Sheffield were also run close by amateur opposition.

Updated: 10:09 Saturday, February 07, 2004