Complacency not tolerated, warns York Knights boss Mark Applegarth

As the Knights’ season nears its end, Applegarth’s side have embarked on an incredible run of 15 consecutive victories, 13 of which have come in the Betfred Championship.

That string of results has seen York rise to the top of the Championship, two points clear of both Bradford Bulls and Toulouse Olympique with just four matches left to play.

After such a run of form and with so few matches left to play, Applegarth is expecting no signs of complacency to creep into his side’s game as they prepare to face London Broncos at the LNER Community Stadium on Sunday.

“No one will do that in a team that I’m coaching, because they won’t be playing for us – it’s as simple as that,” Applegarth issued.

“We pride ourselves on that 80-minute performance, people looking in for each other.

“We definitely did that, and as I say, the most pleasing thing for me from last week was keeping that zero.

“We want to pride ourselves on our defence as a team, and it’s quite easy to say that, but your efforts are always going to show that.

“Macca [Paul McShane], Jordy [Thompson], Scott Galeano, [Brenden] Santi was trying his best to get back there but bless him, his legs just wouldn’t go fast enough for him, and it just shows the commitment that they’ve got to each other in the team as well.”

A run of 15 wins in a row is a testament to the focused mentality of the Knights squad, which Applegarth believes has been a driving force behind a lack of complacency so far.

He also believes that ‘togetherness is the main thing’ that has seen York avoid defeat, and credited the work of captain Liam Harris for his on-and-off-of-the-field contributions

Applegarth told the Press: “The togetherness is the main thing, there’s so many different parts that fall into that.

“One thing that goes unnoticed a lot is the amount of work that our captain does, Liam Harris, behind-the-scenes.

“Not only how good he is on the field, but how good he is off of it.

“We’ve got a real tight-knit group and how I like to coach is to have a lot of players with ownership, and Liam leads that player ownership as you’d expect of our captain.

“I think he does a cracking job in holding them to account, and then obviously I’ll hold who I need to hold into account.

“I think any successful team, or want-to-be successful team has got to have that sort of player driven environment.

“They’re definitely well-connected in that sense, but most importantly, the biggest drive is that everyone is pushing themselves to the best of their ability.

“We’re blessed that everyone is busting a gut in every training session to be better.

“You don’t get too high, you don’t get too low, you just get onto a constant wave of wanting to improve and see where it takes you.”

The Knights have broken records in their rise to the top of the Championship, and whilst it is a nice feeling for Applegarth, he wants the focus to stay on the end goal of this York team.

“I’m just bothered about winning things if I’m honest.

“I couldn’t really care about a winning run, I care more about end outcomes.

“I think naturally that if you want to achieve the goals that we want to achieve, then you’re going to have stats like that, but what’s happened in the past is irrelevant right now.

“It’s great stuff to read when you look at things like that, but it’s not changing Sunday.

“If anything, it just gives your opposition fuel to the fire because they want to be the team that stops that.

“We don’t read into that, there’s four games left and we know that our destiny is in our own hands at the moment.

“That’s all we’re bothered about, rocking up to London on Saturday and dealing with them.”