York City boss Terry Dolan was today stepping up his search for at least one, possibly two, new centre-backs following Saturday's 3-1 defeat at Kidderminster Harriers.

As has happened on more than once occasion this season, City were undone by a succession of quickly conceded goals in the first half as the Division Three newcomers exposed York's defensive weaknesses.

With seasoned sentinel Peter Swan forced to retire, Gary Hobson still recovering from a knee operation and Chris Fairclough having suffered yet another setback as he works his way back to full fitness, Dolan is desperately short of cover at the heart of his defence.

His problems were made worse ahead of City's first visit to the Aggborough Sta-dium when Mark Sertori was ruled-out of the reckoning after pulling a calf muscle in training.

His injury woes were increased on Saturday when full-back Wayne Hall was forced to withdraw midway through the second-half with a pulled hamstring that could rule him out for sometime.

Bradford City's Mark Bower is a known Dolan target having had a successful loan spell at Bootham Crescent at the end of last season.

However, with David Wetherall now ruled out through injury at Valley Parade and new Bantam's boss Jim Jeffries still assessing the rest of his playing staff Do-lan is having to be patient.

"We must look to see if we can get players in. It is as simple as that," said the City chief.

"The goals have resulted from bad defending. "I know what the problem is but at the moment I can't do anything about it.

"We have got to keep persevering with what we have got and unfortunately it is not good enough."

To add to the City manager's woes, the Minstermen had made a positive opening prior to Adie Smith's controversial opening goal on the quarter-hour mark.

An aggrieved City claimed they should have been awarded a goal-kick but the referee waved play-on enabling Scott Stamps to cross, the ball eventually fal-ling to Smith who smashed it home from the edge of the area.

But Dolan was making no excuses. "It was bad defending," he said.

It was bad defending again for the second goal and bad defending for the third goal so all of a sudden we are 3-0 down."

Lee Bullock managed to pull a goal back for City before half-time but hopes of a stirring fightback floundered in the second-half as City missed a succession of well-worked openings.

"In the second-half we didn't have a problem," he said. "The only problem we had was we missed four or five very good chances.

"Lee Bullock's goal got us back into the game and we knew if we could get an-other goal we could get something out of the game.

"We had four or five good chances but didn't put them away. But we shouldn't have to score four or five goals to win a game."

Kidderminster boss Jan Molby was a happy Harrier."I thought some of our ap-proach play and movement was excellent," said the former Liverpool mid-fielder. "It wasn't an outstanding performance over the 90 minutes but we gave ourselves a tremendous cushion with three goals in the first 30 minutes."