YORK City Knights player-coach Paul Broadbent admitted his team needed strengthening but remained positive about their progress after yesterday's loss at Hull KR.

The Knights' two-match winning run ended with a 32-14 defeat, a result which virtually ended their slim hopes of progressing in the Arriva Trains Cup. But although Broadbent was 'very disappointed', he was not too downhearted.

"It's an on-going process," he told the Evening Press. "We've got to address the areas where we need to strengthen but, although it was a setback yesterday, we've got to stay positive about where we're trying to go.

"We have got areas we need to sort out but there are areas that are positive as we do some good things and cause teams some trouble.

"That said, we've not done those good things for any large parts of yesterday's game. I thought we came here with a squad capable of doing the job we were looking for but it was not to be."

He added: "We're still in that learning phase. We know we've got areas to work on and at this stage of the season (the Arriva Trains Cup competition) it's an opportunity to ply our trade against some quality opposition and see how we come up.

"Generally we've not been too bad but we've had a couple of setbacks and yesterday was one of those setbacks because we'd set good standards in previous weeks."

Referee Steve Nicholson came under fire from York fans but Broadbent said: "At the end of the day we haven't got any serious complaints.

"We had all the opportunities to take the game forward and do the right things but we broke down in the wrong areas of the field, and our lack of discipline put us under that bit of pressure, when we were penalised for offside or over-playing things in the tackle."

He continued: "The question is how do we react to a situation like this. When we came up with a poor performance against Dewsbury we bounced back impressively and we've got to make sure we do that again.

"But I'm striving to make sure the players work hard to produce the goods consistently on a weekly basis, and it shouldn't take a defeat to then make people perform to a higher level."

Updated: 10:54 Monday, March 24, 2003