York City Knights’ newest recruit Bailey Antrobus made his Knights debut last time out against Halifax Panthers at the LNER Community Stadium and, despite defeat, he spoke of a positive first outing in the amber and black.
“It was a great experience. It’s obviously a new team and a different environment which was great. The boys were good out there, we just unfortunately couldn’t get the win.
“What’s good is that we have some time to learn from our mistakes but, with a team like this and the coaching staff we’ve got, we can definitely improve on it and come out on top.”
Discussing where things potentially went wrong in last Sunday’s defeat, Wales World Cup hopeful Antrobus pointed to not being able to take advantage of Halifax’s sin-binnings.
“I don’t think we capitalised on the thirteen vs eleven. We could have put the foot on their throat then but that’s footy, unfortunately. Until then, I thought we were going really well and hopefully this weekend we can get the wins.”
While the result didn’t go our way, Antrobus hailed the Knights fans – the fans he met a week previously when, travelling with the squad but not available for selection, he joined them in the stands towards the end of our victory at Bradford.
“It was unreal, so great. To see the turnout and the fans interacting, how appreciative they were, going out of their way to make me feel welcome and knowing my name, I can’t thank them enough for the first couple of weeks!
“They’ve been great and I’d just like to say a massive thank you to them. The boys appreciate you coming out every weekend and helping us. They’re the foundation of the club and, without them, we wouldn’t be here.”
With two games now coming up in the space of four days with a trip to Sheffield Eagles on Thursday before Sunday’s home match against London Broncos, Antrobus pointed to the quick turnaround as being a great opportunity to hit back.
“You’ve always got to put your last game behind you. We need to look at it to see what we’ve got to improve on and it’s great that we’ve got two games in four days to put it right.
“Obviously it’s going to be tough but with the boys we’ve got here, we’ll be ready to go.”
Thursday’s match against Sheffield Eagles is advance ticket sales only with no tickets available on the day.
The Knights have an allocation available at our Club Shop which is open between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday before closing as part of the extended Bank Holiday Weekend.
Adult tickets start from £18, concessions from £12 and junior tickets from £5.
