YORK City Knights chiefs refused to blame referee Steve Addy as their four-match winning sequence came to an end.

Instead they concentrated on the Knights' own performance as they crashed at Chorley Lynx yesterday.

Addy was berated by the incensed travelling support as he left the pitch at the end of the 29-14 defeat, in which he sin-binned two York players and sent another off.

The result saw Chorley leap-frog the Knights in mid-table of National League Two.

"I'm disappointed obviously," chief executive Steve Ferres told the Evening Press.

"Every run has got to come to an end but the way it came to an end was disappointing.

"Chorley were a well-drilled side, a good side, and they stuck to their game plan. We compounded it for ourselves by giving away penalties and they scored tries on the back of those penalties.

"I would say some of the decisions were contentious but I'm not going to comment further on referees. If referees have an off-day the players have got to disregard that, they've got to be bigger than that, and focus on what they're doing."

Ferres again praised the York following as up to 200 travelled to Victory Park to almost double the home gate.

"I'm sorry we disappointed them all, but you can't win every game," he said.

"It will make us focus for our next game against Keighley on Sunday, July 13, and hopefully we will give the crowd something to shout about, something that they deserve."

He added: "It was not our day, we weren't as focused as we should have been, but you have to look at the positives and one of them was the fact (winger) Rob Kama had a solid game on his first start. He looks like he could carve out a future for himself in rugby league."

Player-coach Paul Broadbent said his team have the best possible opportunity to bounce back from yesterday's defeat - by beating leaders Keighley at Huntington Stadium in two weeks' time..

"We lowered our sights a bit and weren't as focused as we have been," he said of yesterday's game. "It started to creep in the latter stages of last week's game (the win at Workington) and, as much as we tried to address it this week, it's come and got us. We've now got to sit down and put it right.

"Our completion rate wasn't good, and at the end of the day in hot conditions like that, if you don't control possession then you're going to struggle. You could maybe get away with it when it's cold and wet but when it's warm, fatigue starts to kick in.

"We showed signs of frustration and that started to cause us to break down. We opened them up a couple of times but that last pass went to ground and then you get more frustrated.

"It's not a major problem, we've just got to put it right, and we've got a great opportunity to do that in two weeks' time."

He said the Knights had to take the controversial performance of the referee "on the chin", and praised Chorley for their display.

"They played a very controlled game," he said. "They played well when they got into the right areas and they did the right things."

He added: "There are no easy games in this competition. You've got to be up for all of them and as soon as you lower your sights a bit whoever you're playing will take advantage of that.

"All in all we should be pretty disappointed we under-performed as far as our recent standards go."

Updated: 11:43 Monday, June 30, 2003