YORK Wasps were knocked out of the Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Challenge Cup yesterday by a matter of inches.

That was the verdict of coach Leo Epifania, who saw his side lose 17-8 to French giants Villeneuve Leopards in a fourth round tie at Huntington Stadium.

The Wasps played probably their best stuff of the season and crossed the try-line four times, only to see one try disallowed for a forward pass and two more ruled out for not grounding the ball.

"There was probably a couple of inches between us winning and losing that game," said Epifania.

"A couple of times we could have got the ball down but didn't. You don't get many try-scoring opportunities in tight games - we had about five or six chances but only scored once, and we went over the line a few times. That was the only thing we fell down on, but credit to their defence."

Villeneuve had a man sent off in the first half, and Epifania agreed his side could have taken advantage.

But he added: "We were over the line four or five times - how much more can you do? They play a really good sliding defence, but, yes, we still should have won the game."

He said his team maybe tried to over-play at crucial times: "We were making enough yards as it was playing simple stuff but maybe tried to score miraculous tries when we didn't need to.

"The players are very disappointed because they put in a huge effort. They knew they set the game up for a win in the second half (playing with the wind) but I just thought we had a bit of bad luck.

"But I thought it was a huge improvement from last week, especially on defence. We've still got time to upset a lot of sides in the Northern Ford Premiership."

Epifania refused to be overly critical of referee Nick Oddy's display, but Shaun Austerfield was not happy.

The Wasps centre was yellow carded for the first time in his career in an incident-packed first half after being penalised for laying on inside the York 20-yard line.

But he said: "I thought (the referee) was poor. He seemed to give a lot of penalties for holding down when they were holding onto us, not letting us up.

"He said he was giving me a yellow card for holding on because he'd had enough of it, but their player was holding me down.

"I've never been sin-binned in my whole career but got sin-binned yesterday without even doing anything."

As for the result, Austerfield added: "We're all gutted. I thought we played really well in most parts of the game but maybe tried to force it too much.

"We missed a few opportunities we should have scored. But we're coming together as a squad. Our defence has let us down in some games, then it's our attack, but we seem to be putting it all together."

peter.martini@ycp.co.uk

Updated: 12:02 Monday, February 11, 2002