It was another disappointing afternoon for the Knights as an 18-10 defeat saw their wait for a first win of the new Championship season extend another fortnight.
They now sit second-bottom, only above newly promoted Hunslet on points difference, whilst Halifax are top, having won all three of their league fixtures thus far.
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“I think the key word is frustrating,” conceded Applegarth.
“I thought Halifax came out of the blocks quicker than us, as we knew they would, they were hurting after last week.
“But I think in that first half they just seemed to want it more than us. We didn’t help ourselves with some poor discipline and some poor handling errors and we just looked disjointed and jittery, so that’s something I’ll have to look at as head coach.
“It was a frustrating afternoon, but listen, we can’t grumble. We didn’t really kick into gear until the last 20 [minutes] when we were chasing the game. We should have started the game with that sort of energy and tempo.
“You’ve got to give credit to Halifax for the win, but it’s another frustrating day for us and we’ll have to get some quality work in next week to fix it.”
Halifax had been 16-0 behind before registering their first points of the match last time out, but took the lead on the quarter-hour after some enterprising play from George Whitby saw the youngster run onto his own chip forward and score next to the posts.
Louis Jouffret added another two points from the tee after a ball strip before Zack McComb was sent to the sin bin for impeding Liam Harris as he looked set to bring the Knights back into proceedings.
York never really looked like capitalising on their numerical advantage, but nonetheless, trailing 8-0 at the break, still left themselves in with a shot.
“I thought Halifax were the better team in that first half in terms of how they went about their business,” admitted Applegarth.
“I thought we came up with two or three sloppy handling errors, two or three sloppy penalties that compounded that, and I thought Halifax just played really clinical and clean; they took the chances when they came and pretty much did what we did to them last week.
“It was a frustrating day for us, we just looked disjointed – it looked at times like we were just making it up on the go, which is obviously not what we’ve trained for.
“There’ll be a few things that we need to address because we can’t keep on saying we’re going to be alright. That’s three games now.
“I know people say it’s only round three, but I’d probably say two of those games were our own undoing – the Toulouse game with how we managed that last 10 [minutes] and that Halifax game, I thought our attack just didn’t fire how we wanted it to fire today.
“It was a frustrating afternoon, but believe me, we’ll be getting it fixed up.”
Jouffret twice hit the right-hand post as he looked to extend Halifax’s lead further, but it was instead York who mounted a comeback, with Ben Jones-Bishop cutting inside off the right wing to touch down before lovely play between Ata Hingano and Levi Edwards sent Oli Field over unopposed.
That cut the gap to two, but it was Halifax who made sure of the points in the final minute when Brandon Douglas pinched the ball off Edwards and crashed over from close range.
Applegarth admits that at times, he thought York’s late burst may have got them out of jail against a much-improved Panthers, but was disappointed not to see his side turn more of their pressure into points.
“I’ll be honest, that last 10 minutes I thought ‘here we go, we’re probably going to get out of jail’. But obviously that one-on-one steal at the end did that.
“If you look at the set before that, we had them trapped in their 20,30, we give a penalty away. Then we give another penalty away, and all of a sudden, you’re camped on your own line.
“I think that was probably the tale of the game. We didn’t build too much pressure, and when we did build pressure, we were a bit wasteful with it. It was a very frustrating day.
“It’s not a lack of effort, that should be there every week at the end of the day with professional coaches and professional players, the buy-in is having that sort of energy and effort in what you do.
“We’ve just got to make sure that we keep putting that polish on because at the moment we’re coming up short and its going to be a frustrating year unless we get it fixed up sharpish.”
