SUCCESS is sweet, ventured York City Knights coach Mick Cook in the wake of the club's scintillating seizure of the LHF Healthplan division two crown.

How right he is, and hopefully he will be proved even more correct by the similar adage often attached to the coveted commodity of success - that it breeds yet more success.

The Knights have been underpinned by a solid platform of marketing and managing acumen ever since they first rose like phoenix Knights from the ashes of the withered Wasps. That shrewdness has been matched on the field throughout a pulsating progression spanning three years started by then head coach Paul Broadbent to his successor Richard Agar and now to the canny Cook.

Nous has been gradually added to a magical mix culminating in Sunday's stirring championship conquest when a corner of South Leeds was forever transformed into a bold Knights of York stronghold.

What a homecoming is now anticipated when the champions - is there a word in sport any more emotive and satisfying as that nine-letter description? - return to Huntington Stadium on September 4.

No club has deserved these days of delight more than the Knights.

As the Wasps they were down and out. Even cloaked in their new Knights-time identity they still had to start from the unpromising position of their boot-straps. But steadily, stealthily, manfully they have hauled themselves from potential to potency.

When there were doubts that they might not be able to shake off the hangover of last season's play-off heartache, they instantly dispelled all those nagging fears with a resolve and resilience that augurs for even sweeter accomplishment.

There is a growing feeling in the city, one that has always been fuelled by a fervent rugby league tradition, that the Knights are now the equal, if not the superiors of their city football cousins, York City.

The complete lack of prissiness, pretentiousness and pomp among the Knights ensures that they themselves would never broadcast such an opinion, but there is a growing weight to it.

Such has been their meticulous scrutiny to detail, there is also the feeling the Knights will not run anywhere before they can walk.

But by virtue of the valiant leap they have now negotiated, the hugely appetising advance to the Super League has to be on the horizon - and reaching that goal would, I would venture, propel them beyond the Minstermen, with whom they are destined to share a super-stadium in the none too distant future.

Now then is the time for York City to study in fine detail the Knights model of success. They have travelled from arse-end to acclaim, an achievement all the more rewarding given the financial strictures of not even owning their own ground.

Whatever any differences, there is a major factor in common between the two. Each boast a fantastic fan base.

The rugby league faithful, like the football brethren in the city, have dug deeper than miners to resurrect their clubs from their respective perilous plights. It is a thread of devotion to warm the coldest heart.

Now York City need to get into the copying game on the field of combat and there are tangible signs that manager Billy McEwan's revolution is heading in the right direction.

With the Knights title-topping the table with two games still to play and City unbeaten after three starts to the Conference, sports pages are no longer the preserve of faces elongated by misery and despair. Long may that continue.

Updated: 10:30 Tuesday, August 23, 2005