York Knights boss Mark Applegarth gave a scathing review of his side’s performance in defeat to Huddersfield Giants with the head coach admitting to feeling ‘embarrassed’ at the loss.
Huddersfield started fastest with the Giants racing into an early three-try lead before eventually winning 34-14 with Applegarth lamenting his side’s poor defence at the Accu Stadium.
Speaking post-match on Sky Sports, he said: “I like to pride my teams on defence, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near just yet in terms of that,
“Spirit, effort and application, I never question that, especially at this level but we need to be a little bit more steely, shall we say.
“At the moment, we’re coming up with an error, and that start, we can’t accept that. That can’t be our standard.”
Applegarth’s assessment continued, as he admitted: “There will be a few embarrassed boys in there, and I’m embarrassed as a coach, especially how we started. It stings if I’m honest with you, I wasn’t expecting that start, so we’re going to have to regroup very quickly.
“We’ve got a tough game coming up next week against KR in the Cup and that’s nowhere near where we want to be as a team, if I’m perfectly honest with you.”
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York Knights looking for answers after Huddersfield defeat
Having won two of their first three Super League games, including against next week’s opponents Hull KR, the Knights have now lost four on the spin.
For Applegarth, it’s a reminder of the necessity to be on it from minute one in every game, as he said: “Fair play to Huddersfield, we’ve got to congratulate them. They started well, completely outplayed us in that start, and when we finally woke up and got into gear, we left ourselves far too much to do.
“You then compound that with some pretty average defence and some soft errors, and you’re not going to win a game of rugby league, are you, at this level?
“That’s on me. I’m head coach, I’m the leader of this team, and it’s up to me to come up with the answers, and believe me, we’ll be working hard to make sure we do.”
With Hull KR next up in the Challenge Cup, York’s dream of returning to Wembley, where they won last year’s 1895 Cup remain alive, but Applegarth dismissed any talk of that match as he underlined his side’s need to learn from defeat at the hands of Huddersfield.
He said: “We’re not going to look at next week yet, I’ll be honest with you. It’s really important we sit down and review why we served up what we did today, and once we’ve done that we’ll start looking at next week.
“It’s really important we learn those lessons from today, first and foremost, and players understand that we can’t put those sort of efforts in, especially defensively. I’d say the majority of the team worked hard today, but we can’t afford one or two just to be slightly off and let us down like that.”
Back-to-back wins lifts Huddersfield Giants off the bottom of the Super League table 🔥 pic.twitter.com/KithsiJh1o
— Sky Sports Rugby League (@SkySportsRL) April 4, 2026
