YORK City Knights went joint-top of Championship One after the first weekend of the league season – but the overriding emotion was one of disappointment.

The Knights saw off unfancied London Skolars 36-8 at Huntington Stadium to end yesterday level at the summit on points-difference with arch-rivals Hunslet, who beat Gateshead – the Skolars’ fellow rank outsiders in the division – 40-12.

But assistant-coach Mick Ramdsen revealed player/caretaker-boss Chris Thorman had to rally the troops in the changing room afterwards, telling them they must enjoy all victories, such was the dissatisfaction with the level of performance.

Said the Knights stalwart: “Everyone has come in a bit glum-faced, questioning everything, why aren’t we doing this or that right, all looking at each other. But Chris made us sing the song that we sing after games because you’ve got to enjoy the wins. That way team spirit will build, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”

However, he knew they had work to do to keep winning.

“We’ve got to learn that if we’re going to do well this year we’ve got to perform in every game for the full 80 minutes,” he said.

“We haven’t really hit our straps and that’s something we’re working very hard on.

“Our preparation this week was disjointed because there were a couple of inches of water standing on the pitch on Friday so we couldn’t train that night. But we’ve got to work hard on getting 80-minute performances in every game.”

The Skolars opened the scoring in both halves, before the Knights hit back each time with rapid-fire scores – three tries in ten minutes at the end of the first half, and two tries in four minutes around the hour mark – to take the game away. Lee Waterman scored a solo effort on the final hooter to end the game with two tries and six goals for a personal tally of 20 points.

Ramsden said: “We didn’t start the game like we intended to. I was very disappointed with the enthusiasm of the team.

“The Skolars are a decent side and they caused us a bit of trouble, and we just didn’t get up there like we said we would.

“We started the second half as I wanted them to start. There was more urgency, the tempo was raised and we had a couple of really good sets on their line.

“It looked like we’d turned it round a bit but we gave three consecutive penalties away to get them back on our line, just gifting them opportunities to attack us, and they scored a try from it.”

The Knights’ first salvo came after Ramsden had swapped over the props, bringing on big Brett Waller, who got the first try, and Mark Applegarth.

Said Ramsden: “I don’t know if that was because of the substitutions. Our front-rows have done a lot of work but those two bring us a lot of different things, especially Brett with his off-load game.

“It did seem to change things a bit, but I just think we were lacking on enthusiasm and that was the most disappointing thing.

“We’ve got to get up for it and play as we would do against the top teams. You’ve got to play at that standard against these teams as well.

“We were patchy. We’re doing really good things at times. In the first half, we didn’t run from deep enough and we didn’t run into the holes enough. When we did do it we caused them all sorts of trouble, but we didn’t seem to consistently do it throughout the game.

“We’ve got to work on that otherwise we won’t stay at the top of the table.”