York 4, Batley 13

Double trouble of a deja vu variety muted the promotion talk at Huntington Stadium.

History repeated itself as York Rugby League Club followed up a Bramley stutter with a Batley slip for the second time this season.

The Wasps have reserved their worst displays for those two foes and yesterday's 13-4 reverse was the most alarming of a losing quartet.

The hosts regrouped and reshuffled in the aftermath of their Headingley defeat but the Bulldogs put the bite on any hopes of a quick recovery of lost ground.

After briefly hitting the heights of first place the Wasps have ducked out of the promotion places following victories elsewhere for Bramley, Lancashire and Oldham.

The Wasps camp are unlikely to press the panic button in advance of the season's midway point, but the White Rose Championship is but a distant hope and vital home league points have gone astray yet again.

And they only narrowly avoided the ignominy of a whitewash in their own backyard, centre Alex Godfrey scoring his third try of the season to spare that embarrassment.

A series of handling errors in the first half pointed to a lack of cohesion in the amber and black ranks, while forward passes put a stop to any significant scoring chances.

Claims on the Second Division's tightest defensive record have started to wear a touch thin, almost as threadbare as the tackling that allowed Gary Barnett and Andy Wray to score soft first half tries.

The home side left out leading scorer Leigh Deakin and looked short of attacking ideas against Batley's well-organised defensive line, trailing 11-0 at the half-time interval.

Stand-in scrum-half Andy Preston, asked to fill in for the injured David Brook, did not re-appear after the break, paying the price for the entire side's failings.

The post-interval performance largely mirrored the first half - a massive territorial advantage for the Wasps negated by errors in the face of superb Batley defence.

The Bulldogs were in snarling mood and, led by the efforts of props Roy Powell and Chris McWilliam, they engineered sufficient second half possession to allow Barnett to snaffle two sharp drop goal chances.

A series of strange refereeing decisions by Wigan official Ray Cornish led to an inflated penalty count of 14-11 in York's favour, while two incidents were placed on report.

The referee recorded prop Craig Booth's claims that he was bitten in the 32nd minute and then, in first half injury time, Batley second rower Tony Walton was reported for his head high tackle on Stuart Flowers.

The Wasps did manage to cross the Batley line on one occasion in the opening period, hooker Gareth Dobson touching down in the seventh minute before seeing his try ruled out for obstruction by team-mate Spencer Hargrave.

Scrum-half Barnett had already scored the first of his drop goal treble by that stage and shortly afterwards he was celebrating his try.

The half-back picked up from a scrum, exchanged passes with centre Darren Hughes and used his momentum to carry him over an under-protected Wasps line.

York's defensive line also parted invitingly for hooker Wray to score on 22 minutes after a relentless run by the vastly experienced Powell, Richard Price kicking his solitary goal.

A Lee Hanlan pass rebounded off the chest of Flowers and the same pair came up with a forward pass to scupper Godfrey's 37th minute scoring chance.

Winger Chris Hopcutt, meanwhile, missed a tricky penalty kick into the wind.

The half-time departure of Preston saw Hanlan move to seven, while substitute Mark Cain came in a full-back to release John Strange at stand-off.

However, the switches brought more of the same.

The Bulldogs were pegged back in their own half for long periods, only a sixth tackle punt relieving the Wasps pressure.

But the Wasps were in try-spurning mode, Shaun Austerfield holding the ball when Matt Lambert was calling for a pass on the outside, Booth being held up on his back and Hopcutt being tackled into touch near the line.

By contrast, Batley made the most of their rare excursions into the Wasps danger zone, Barnett grabbing his two drop goals in the space of three minutes.

Godfrey went in at the corner from substitute Lambert's pass but, with less than three minutes remaining, there was no way back for the Wasps.

We can bounce back, says bitten Booth

York RL prop forward Craig Booth today claimed the Batley Bulldogs attack possessed an illegal bite.

Booth told the Evening Press he was bitten on his right hand during the first half of yesterday's White Rose Championship clash.

The front rower brought the matter to the attention of referee Ray Cornish in the 32nd minute of the Wasps' 13-4 defeat, the Wigan official placing the incident on report.

The biting allegations will now be investigated by the Rugby Football League disciplinary committee, which recently issued a warning about the severity of punishments likely to be handed down for such offences.

Booth declined to comment further on the incident, preferring to leave the matter to the referee and RFL.

However, the prop forward expressed his disappointment at the Wasps second successive defeat.

"We have lost a bit of urgency in our defence, we don't seem to be knocking them back like we were at the beginning of the season," he said.

"We were winning games with our defence. We did not play our sets of six out and were panicking as usual."

But Booth dismissed claims that there was a crisis of confidence after the club's five game winning run was ended by Bramley the previous week.

"The way forward for us is to analyse what we have done and see what is going wrong. In the second half we were always in their half but it just broke down every time," he said.

"We took it to our left hand side and there were no options, no inside runners. You have got to make the defence look and think twice and that is where you get the gaps.

"We have lost to Bramley and Batley both times. But whoever wins this league will have lost six or seven games. We have gone down to fourth but we have got to start winning again.

"It is not over. It is silly for people to start to think that."

Hogg The Builder/Evening Press Man of the Match :

Craig Brown

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