Sam Cook hails York Knights' defensive efforts against Dons

The New Zealander opened the scoring after nine minutes, with Will Dagger slotting over a penalty before ex-Knights half-back Connor Robinson was sent to the sin-bin for a late shot.

Capitalising on their man advantage, Connor Bailey sent Joe Brown across into the corner to hand the hosts a 12-0 half-time lead, before Oli Field reacted quickest to Ata Hingano’s grubber within minutes of the restart.

Dagger then slotted over another penalty and a last-minute drop-goal either side of Brown’s second to round off a dominant 27-0 triumph.

Doncaster had started brightly, matching the Knights set-for-set until Cook’s opener, but offered relatively little thereafter.

Cook's arrival at the Knights coincided with that of new head coach Mark Applegarth. (Image: Craig Hawkhead Photography)

And the hooker, whose arrival to the club coincided with that of new head coach Mark Applegarth at the beginning of last month, was pleased to see his side’s defensive efforts rewarded.

“I think we started well, we built that pressure at the start of the game which set us up for that second half,” he reflected.

“Obviously the very pleasing thing was that we were able to keep them to zero points.  We made a big emphasis on during the week to put a lot of effort into our defence, and I thought we did that.

“They are a big team, a big strong team and they’re very experienced as well.

“We should be very pleased about being able to hold them out for the whole game and not let any points in, because they came to play today as well.

“They didn’t just let us push them over, they made us work for it, and we did that.”

Cook was handed his debut in last month’s 40-0 rout of basement side Dewsbury Rams, turning out at hooker, loose forward and half-back during the second half.

And though left out of their squad for the two weeks that followed, he appears not to have looked back, for his efforts in training have seen him start at hooker against both Barrow and Doncaster over the last fortnight.

The 30-year-old scored in both with near-identical dummy-half darts, admitting that is something that he likes to keep in his repertoire.

“It’s a little play that I keep in my back pocket and pull out every now and then,” he revealed.

“But as the coach says, they all count whether its one metre or 20 metres out, so I’ll take it.

“I just got over there really sneakily. I’m happy to come away with another try.”

A hamstring injury to captain Liam Harris forced Cook into the halves during the second half, where he appeared to slot in naturally alongside Ata Hingano until a suspected eye socket fracture forced the Tongan from the field late on.

“Growing up I’ve played at half-back, so it wasn’t as much of a new role as people might think,” the Kiwi explained.

“Losing Liam, obviously it was a big loss for us.

“But I think we did well and we just stuck strong in our defence – that went a long way to us coming away with the win.

“There were a couple of moments there which I think we’ll review, that maybe myself and the team could have done better.

“But all in all, Ata took control of the game and I just tried to have his back with that, and we came away with it.”