MARK Applegarth hopes that York Knights can build on their dominant display against Swinton Lions as they look to mount a push into the Betfred Championship play-offs.

A Nikau Williams double headed the Knights’ 34-4 triumph, with Josh Daley, Jimmy Keinhorst, Oli Field and Sam Cook also finding the whitewash as they produced a performance as sizzling as the North Yorkshire sunshine.

The only dampeners were Connor Bailey’s sin bin on the stroke of half time after a culmination of inconsistent refereeing decisions from Kevin Moore, with Jake Spedding then catching Brad Ward napping as he ran in a consolation for Swinton in the dying minutes.

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But whilst the Knights boss was pleased with his side’s response from a poor performance at Bradford Bulls last week, he was disappointed not to record a third clean sheet of his tenure and conceded his side must clean up their discipline.

“I’m really happy that obviously we got the response that we wanted,” admitted Applegarth.

“It’s a weird one because we were more wanting to keep that zero at the end, that’s the last thought in my head, that’s probably just the emotions of the game.

“I thought we showed some really good spirit about us. We knew it was going to be a tough game – Swinton are one of those teams that even if you do get out in front, they’ll never go away, they’re a pretty together group.

“We’re happy with that, but we’re also under no illusions that we’ve got to sort our discipline out, we can’t keep on putting teams in those vulnerable positions on the field and piggyback them out of it.

“I’m really happy that we’ve got the scoreline and naturally, as a coach, you’re always looking for those fixups and where you can improve to make sure that you’re where you want to be come the end of the year.”

York played with a ferocious pace that at times suffocated Swinton, allowing them to play free flowing and enterprising rugby.

Nikau Williams' second try was the result of a fluid flowing move.Nikau Williams' second try was the result of a fluid flowing move. (Image: Craig Hawkhead Photography)

And that was evidenced no more than in Williams’ second try, with Keinhorst breaking through the Lions’ defence and the ball going through both Cook and Hingano on its way to the stand-in full-back, who capped off a sweeping move by diving beneath the posts.

Swinton were similarly at sixes and sevens when Cook capped off the hosts’ scoring, Jacob Gannon able to reel in Ward’s cut-out pass one-handed before releasing Hingano and Williams, who was brought down narrowly short before the New Zealander scored from the next play.

“I thought there was some outstanding rugby played, a couple of those tries were proper team tries with fluent rugby,” the Knights boss enthused.

“We’ve just got to keep building on that now in what is an important run of games for us.

“We challenged our middles. We knew that Swinton were going to come after us, and I thought that’s where they were probably a bit vulnerable.

“We knew that if we could keep our foot on their throat and push the pace of that game, we might get some joy.

“Obviously going down to 12 men, we had to just manage that first period in the second half, which we didn’t exactly do giving away a couple of penalties.

“But as soon as we got back to our full contingent and brought Josh [Daley] back on who injected that pace around nine, I thought we looked pretty dangerous.

“There’s lots of positive signs but we’ve just got to keep building on it.”