York Wasps coach Dean Robinson blasted his players after their 30-6 reversal against Hunslet Hawks at South Leeds Stadium, writes Pete Barrow.

Robinson was not just dissatisfied with an under par performance, but laid the blame firmly at the feet of "three or four" under-achievers he felt had undermined the whole team's effort.

"I am not happy with the performance as a team because we have not competed as we should have," said Robinson. "But I also have to say that it is down to three or four individuals who put in poor performances - it is as simple as that.

"You cannot play this game with nine or ten men busting a gut and a few others standing around watching them.

"From the point of view of individuals there were three players who missed 21 tackles between them and when that happens it puts the rest of the team on the back foot."

But with a crop of injuries and Australian centre Andrew Lambert back home due to his mother's illness, Robinson revealed he had few options.

"As things are they were the only 17 players that we could put out, but hopefully we should have one or two back for next weekend," said Robinson.

"But until that happens there is very little we can do and all I can try is to work on putting things right when we are training."

Without naming names Robinson highlighted just where he felt the problems lie. "There are no two ways about it we did not play well at half back and we struggled in defence in the three-quarters," explained Robinson.

"But some individuals did play very well and I felt that Leroy McKenzie looked sharp after coming back from suffering flu.

"Garry Atkins probably shouldn't have been playing as he has an arm injury. He was only 50-50 but he volunteered to play and to his credit it did me a really big job.

"I thought Craig Booth had a big match in what was his first full game of the season and Gareth Dobson showed that he is a class act.

"And I had no qualms at all with props Rich Hayes and Steve Hill performances because they had a big job to do, especially when Lea Titchener, who was also a close call on injury, broke down after only being on the field for about 15 minutes."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.