PATIENCE was the virtue being extolled by York City Knights boss Mick Cook after seeing his side continue their losing start to the LHF Healthplan National League One season.

The Knights were guilty of too many basic errors as they lost 34-24 at Halifax yesterday, and Cook reckoned several of them were due to attempting glory passes and overambitious plays.

"In the first half we had clean breaks but lacked patience - we've got to be more patient at times," he said.

"We opened them up enough times to score more but we did not.

"It's been a bit of a trait of ours, trying to squeeze out an impossible pass to make it look like a spectacular try rather than build pressure and have a quality end to a set.

"In games like these you don't get that many opportunities and you need to take them or put them in the bank and we did not do that."

He said simple individual mistakes also proved costly. "We twice failed to field the kick-off back to us, and you can't do that," he gave as an example.

"That should have been us finishing with a kick inside their 20 but we were defending inside our 20. We just did not build pressure.

"We had five sets at the end of the first half when we did not get past the first three tackles. Our skills let us down."

He added: "We had control of the game and field position (in the first half) but we let it get taken away.

"We played strong then got loose and then came back strong again but it was too late. We have to be an 80-minute side to do anything in the First Division.

"We've let some soft tries in again and although we came good at the end it came too late."

Cook had praise for the Evening Press man of the match, Jim Elston. "He had tough defence, great marker play and he's very quick from dummy-half and that causes problems," he said.

The Knights boss reckoned there were some other positives from the performance but added: "We have to stop taking these positives and start taking some points."

Updated: 10:34 Tuesday, April 18, 2006