ASSISTANT coach Mick Ramsden spoke of his “relief” as York City Knights finally got their first win of the Co-operative Championship season – at the tenth time of asking – with a 26-22 victory over Swinton Lions at Huntington Stadium.

“It feels great to get that monkey off our backs,” he said of the win, which also pushed the Knights off the bottom of the table.

“There is a lot of relief, really. It’s a good feeling. It was a gritty performance.

“I thought we battled hard, especially in the closing stages. Swinton are a dangerous team but we battled hard and the lads fully deserved that win.”

The victory was sealed with a wonderful try scored by Matt Garside in the 74th minute, which saw the Knights move the ball three quarters of the length of the field with Jordan Tansey and Waine Pryce both heavily involved.

It was the latter’s first game since recovering from a partially ruptured quad, suffered ironically in the Knights’ Northern Rail Cup match against Swinton in February, and Ramsden had visions of that injury as Pryce ran down the right to set up the final score.

“It is probably the best try we have scored all year,” Ramsden added.

“I did have a vision of the game where Waine hurt his leg when he was running into the corner there. Our physio said the same thing. It was exactly the same run.

“But he got a beautiful ball on the inside to Matty, which was good skill because he had to cross the path of one of the Swinton players to get it to him, and it was a fantastic try and a great way to win the game.”

He continued: “Waine Pryce was a massive plus for us. He came through with flying colours.”

The Knights assistant coach insisted Pryce’s return provided a huge boost even if the player was not fully match fit.

Added Ramsden: “It lifted the whole squad with him coming back from that injury. It was great to have him out there. I thought he was a threat.

“I still don’t think he’s 100 per cent fit yet. I thought, through the team, it was stronger this week.”

The Knights did not come through the game without cost, however.

Ramsden revealed that former Great Britain prop Paul King, who had a second-half try controversially disallowed, suffered a repeat of the elbow injury that has disrupted his season.

“It is a recurrence of his elbow injury from the start of the season,” Ramsden explained.

“We are going to have to have a look at that next week.

“Kingy wasn’t actually fully fit. He came to me before the game saying he wasn’t feeling himself.

“I had to keep a watchful eye on him. We don’t normally take him off after 20 minutes in recent games but we did because he was blowing a lot.

“When the try was disallowed I thought it fired him up because some of his carries after that were venomous and he was really firing into them. Unfortunately, he hurt his elbow again.”