So said York Knights Head Coach Mark Applegarth, who reiterated the need to uphold standards within his group of players.
The Knights will head down to London Broncos on Saturday, May 3 (5pm) as they continue their progress in the Betfred Championship, taking on a team that are currently second from bottom.
However, Applegarth will not be resting on his laurels and instead insisted that his players need to continue battling for a place in the squad, having been impressed by the attitudes of a number of his players in recent weeks.
It is causing Applegarth quite the selection headache, but one the York Head Coach welcomes, praising the professionalism of his troops.
“There’s some real tough calls,” Applegarth admitted in his pre-match press conference.
“Taylor Pemberton has been training really well, Jacob Gannon, Connor Fitzsimmons, Joe Law, Brad Ward is back, Myles Harrison is back, Jack Teanby is knocking on the door.
“There are lads that I’ve not even mentioned there!
“That’s what you’ve got to do as a coach, I’m having private conversations with these people and am telling them what I’m looking at and what they need to do compared to the people that are in front of them.
“We’re lucky that we’ve got a real good set of professionals and eventually everyone will get their chance.
“The main thing is that whoever is playing the best and is upholding standards, will keep the shirt.
“It’s as simple as that, it’s a professional sport where we are not willing to hand out shirts for the sake of handing out shirts; you’ve got to earn that shirt.
“No one does it, but no one should think a shirt is guaranteed to them, because it’s not.
“You rent the shirt every week and you’ve got to make sure you pay that rent.
“Luckily, we’ve got a squad that buy into that and work hard, and the lads that aren’t in the squad, when they do get their chance, you’ll know they’ve earned it.”
One player who was given an opportunity in last Sunday’s 26-12 win over Widnes Vikings for the Knights was that of Jacques O’Neill, making his York debut after an injury.
Applegarth was encouraged by what he saw from O’Neill, especially considering the sin-bin to Jesse Dee which reduced the Knights to 12-men, but also called for patience before making any judgements on last Sunday’s debutant.
The Knights boss added: “He was good, it was a bit of a tricky one actually as my plan was to put Jacques on with Macca [Paul McShane] for five to ten minutes.
“It was just so that Macca could guide him a little bit with that transition, but we obviously went down to 12-men, so I had to leave Macca out there for his leadership and Jacques out there too.
“He’ll be a lot better for it, he did a couple of strong carries and strong tackles.
“He’s been out for a long, long time, but he looks really fit from a fitness point of view.
“Your everyday fitness, but getting your rugby fitness back, there is unfortunately only one way of getting that – by playing minutes.
“We need to be smart with him and not expect too much from him too soon, and it would probably be wise to look at him a bit more objectively after five to ten games.”
