York Knights are reeling from a fresh injury blow, but one of their star signings has been cleared to face his previous club next week.
Knights snapped a five-game losing run with a 38-14 home win over fellow promoted side Toulouse Olympique last night (Thursday).
But the precious victory, which lifted York two points clear of bottom club Toulouse, came at a price when veteran second-rower Josh Griffin was hurt in the first half.
Knights coach Mark Applegarth expects the former Castleford Tigers, Wakefield Trinity and Hull FC man to be missing for a long spell.
“I think it’s a ruptured biceps,” he confirmed. “Two or three minutes in, he said he felt it pop straight away.
“I’m gutted for Josh. I’ll have to get a proper assessment, but from what I’m being told, it’s a ruptured biceps tendon.”
There was better news about winger Jon Bennison who has been given the all clear after suffering a scare during his Knights debut.
Bennison joined York in pre-season from next Friday’s hosts St Helens, but a hip injury meant he had to wait for his first appearance.
Applegarth said: “He was good. He got an HIA [head injury assessment], the doctors called that so he had to come off, but he passed it and went back on and it was a solid debut.
“I’m really happy for Jon. Now he has got that first game out of his way he’ll be able to kick on and get on with business.”
York Knights boss hails discipline as losing streak snaps
York dominated most of the game against their French visitors, who grabbed a couple of late tries to make the result appear closer than it actually was.
“I’m really proud about how the lads stuck to the game plan,” Applegarth reflected.
“I thought we were really disciplined in how we went about our business.
“We’ve learned some pretty valuable lessons over this period of five, six games leading into tonight.
“We’ve been speaking week upon week, and just putting those little improvements in and I thought we did that overall.
“I’m really proud of everybody, really, and how they’ve stuck together. When you face a bit of adversity, you learn a lot about people and one thing I’m really sure of and really proud of in this group is how tight they are.”
He stressed: “We won’t get carried away with ourselves. We’ll enjoy this – it’s really important you enjoy your wins – but we want to start capitalising on that now and then put in another disciplined performance next week going over to St Helens and hopefully build on that.”
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