The famous Mount Pleasant slope has seldom brought joy for York over recent years, but they were good value for their win, which saw tries from Joe Law, Liam Harris, Jack Martin and Oli Field, alongside three Harris conversions and a drop-goal.
Batley offered relatively little in response, despite the Knights’ ill-discipline often propelling them into good-ball position, in the end their only replies coming from Robbie Butterworth and loanee Brad Martin in a brief second half comeback.
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“I thought our defensive application was first class today,” the head coach enthused.
“It was by no means the prettiest game to watch, but I thought how we went about our business in defence was absolutely first class. And the togetherness that the lads showed, especially in that last 20 minutes, epitomises what we want to be about this year.
“It’s never an easy game coming to Batley, is it? Especially with the way that we started the game and gave a few penalties away, I thought ‘is it going to be the same as the last few weeks?’
“But the character the lads have shown, I’m a happy coach and I’m over the moon today, mainly with the grit and tenaciousness that we showed.”
The Knights had the advantage of playing down the hill in the first half but initially struggled to get going, with the familiar sting of penalties threatening to again prove their undoing.
There was an element of luck as Field managed to gather in Sam Cook’s looping cut-out pass before playing in Law to open the scoring. But the more time that passed, the better the Knights were, and Harris’ trademark try gave them a 10-0 half time lead that they were good value for.
Batley emerged with a fire under them after the break, with nobody able to keep up with Butterworth’s turn of pace as he ran 30 metres to the right corner, but York crucially hit back, Martin somehow fending off four defenders as he reached out a hand to score under the posts.
And though the hosts replied with a Martin try of their own to cut the gap to six points, Harris’ drop-goal turned the tide back the Knights’ way before Field collected Paul McShane’s offload to wrap up the win in front of a vocal travelling support with three minutes to play.
“We’ve been speaking about learning from our past mistakes and getting some composure about us, and I definitely thought we showed that today.
“The second half, we knew we’d have to roll our sleeves up and win ugly, it’s one of the things we’d spoken about as a group, learning to win ugly, and I definitely think we did that today.
“At this stage of the year coming to grounds like Mount Pleasant, you’ve just got to find a way to win. How everyone went about doing that today is really pleasing.”
With the influential Will Dagger (quad) and Ata Hingano (broken hand) ruled out, Applegarth was forced to shuffle the Knights’ spine.
McShane switched from hooker to partner Harris in the halves, with Cook playing at nine, Joe Brown at full-back and the ever-impressive Jordan Thompson back at loose forward on his 100th appearance for the club after a stint in the front row.
And the commitment of York’s injury hit squad did not go unnoticed.
“I thought 1-17 rolled their sleeves up, 100 per cent.
“I think the biggest thing for us now is that just we want to get a bit of consistency out there with the spine.
“I don’t think we’ve named the same spine team yet this season, and I think it shows. I think you need to let them get used to playing with each other, but obviously injuries force your hand and things like that. We’re going to try and get it as settled as we can there, injury dependent.
“I thought there were a number of players that had great games: Joe Law’s first game back in a while, I thought he played well on the wing, I thought Jordan Thompson was immense for his 100th game for York, we spoke about that all week and wanting to make that a happy one for him. I thought Kieran Buchanan wanted a big one against his old club and he certainly served up that.
“But I could go through the team; Jack Martin, I thought he did a real gritty shift and Liam and Macca kept pulling the strings and putting us in the areas of the field that we needed to be.”
