DAVE WOODS praised his York City Knights battlers after they crucially won 48-42 in an eventful game at Swinton – but he also rollocked them for making life hard.

New recruit Ryan Esders grabbed the headlines by scoring a hat-trick on his debut back at the Knights, only 48 hours after signing on loan from Harlequins.

But he marred his return by being sin-binned following a mass melee at the side of the pitch after he had been tackled into touch – a melee that led to Knights captain Jordan Ross also being controversially sent off.

The sorry scene, five minutes in the second half, after which Swinton’s Ian Watson was also sin-binned, also led to a spectator being ejected from the ground.

Woods lauded his side for overcoming the man disadvantage but said they chose the wrong options at times, forcing the play on the off-chance they would score instead of making sure they kept possession.

He said: “If they come off they’re great, but nine out of ten times they don’t and they put you under pressure.

“We worked hard when down to 12 and 11 players but we made it difficult for ourselves and kept them in the game by playing dumb.

“We lost possession four or five times just by being dumb. There’s a pattern of play out there and they need to stick to it.”

The Aussie also demanded improvements defensively after his side shipped in eight tries, albeit in victory which, coupled with Rochdale’s defeat at Workington, cemented their third place in Championship One.

He said: “We were scoring at will when we got the ball and ran our plays properly. But (defensively) we were getting off too quickly when we were working in contact and it let them dictate play.”

The result followed the Knights’ “ugly win” over Workington last week.

Woods added: “I don’t know whether this one was an ugly win or what. I don’t know what sort of win it was. You can’t let 42 points past you – that’s not good enough in defence. We’re going to have to work harder on that.”

Woods nevertheless said he was always confident the Knights would prevail, even after the sending-off, which was followed by two quick Swinton tries to narrow the gap to two points – only for 12-man York to hit back with a quick-fire treble.

He said of referee Dave Merrick’s decision: “I fail to see how you can send one bloke off when there’s a fight involving virtually every player on there. Swinton had a few blokes run from half-way to join in. To pick one player out is difficult to comprehend.

“It’s a big, wide pitch and having only 11 players out there for a time made it tough. I congratulated them on their effort. We upped our game a little bit (when a man down) and upped the speed. I was never worried we were going to lose. I thought we were in control still. But we kept them in the game with dumb mistakes.”

New man Esders, a substitute, joined the fray at centre, alongside two-try winger Tom Lineham. Woods said: “He hasn’t had a training run with us yet but he slipped back in all right. He took his tries well. He didn’t have to do a real lot defensively but he talked a lot and that helped Tom.”