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Knights on the
brink
AS York City Knights stand just
three wins from promotion, coach James Ford refuses to forget how far the club
has come in a relatively short space of time.
Little over
two years ago, Ford admitted he was “lost for words” after being told the
Knights were on the brink of folding midway through the 2016 season.
Now, the difference could hardly be
more marked.
After the successful takeover of the club
later that year, the new regime has overseen a stunning reversal in fortunes that
has seen bumper crowds flock to their new Bootham Crescent base and Ford’s side
on the brink of promotion to the Championship.
Now York are being spoken about as a
potential Super League club, and their well-regarded coach was recently handed
a three-year full-time deal.
But Ford has never forgotten the trials
and tribulations him and his players had to go through - and actually feels
they will benefit from them in the long-term.
In an extensive interview in the new
issue of Rugby League World, Ford explained: “When the club decided it was
going to wind itself up when the Super 8s started the year before last, and
we’d been in second and going pretty well - that knocked us for six to be
honest.
“Players
were looking around for other clubs and our form really dipped. We were one of
the favourites for promotion and were a pretty ordinary side by the end of the
year.
“But
you always learn from that, and those first three years as a coach certainly
helped me develop as a person and a coach. Somewhere down the line I’ll probably need
to draw on that experience to help me get through other sticky patches.”
Ford’s
side have earned praise for an enterprising style of play that has seen them
rack up numbers scoring records this season - but the coach refuses to get
carried away, having experienced golden point play-off defeats the last two
seasons.
He added: “Obviously we set targets
that we kept to ourselves because we didn’t want to shout our mouths off about
what we wanted to achieve.
“We
still haven’t done - we’ve just focused on trying to be better every week, and
we are improving.
“We’ve
had some good performances and some so-so performances when our work ethic and
character has got us through. All champion sides have got that and it’s
something we’ve focused on.”
* Read the full interview with James
Ford in the September edition of Rugby League World, out now
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