YORK Knights head coach Andrew Henderson is aware of the ‘importance’ of the fixture against London Broncos on Sunday (3pm).

Henderson is keen to see his side discover some consistency within the squad and with results, after accumulating just six points from their opening nine games.

The Knights head coach is keen for a performance tomorrow, and wants to see his side begin to build towards a play-off finish.

“We have spoken about it as a group and we know the importance of this fixture,” Henderson admitted.

“The reality is that we are a third of the way into the season and we’ve won three from nine, so we’ve got to start picking up points.

“If we fail to do so then it’s going to make that task of making the top six harder and put a lot more pressure on the team to have a huge second-half of the season.

“The fact that we’ve still got two-thirds of the season to go does mean that we have still got time, but we do need to start picking up some points.

“I’m focusing heavily on performance at the moment because we need to get some consistency in our performance. Hopefully we can deliver the standard of performances that I know this team are capable of and we will be able to earn some points along the way.

“The challenge that we have had is that lack of continuity, I keep coming back to it, but the reality is that we had 14 or 15 players on average in pre-season, we’ve had a different team every week pretty much throughout the season.

“We’ve had six or seven half-back combinations, it’s different centres, playing different sides, different full-backs, it’s really been fairly disrupted this year.

“As I’ve always said as a coach, that certainly won’t be an excuse for a lack of effort and that’s the one thing that I will always challenge the players on no matter what position you are playing this week.

“One thing we can control is our energy and focusing on our effort-based areas. That’s got to be the focus for us, because once we do get the majority of the bodies back then we can start to put people into their more preferable positions and in what I feel will be the right balance for this team.

“We can really start evolving our game, our attack and start to build that trust and understanding and chemistry so to speak.

“It has been difficult, I’m not going to lie. But at the end of the day the team has got a duty to perform for one another, to perform for our big fan base and to perform for the club.

“Hopefully we’ll see a committed, spirited and energetic performance from us on Sunday against London.”

Henderson is expecting a tough challenge against London Broncos, who he described as disciplined ahead of Sunday.

“There is some players there that were there when I was there, obviously the head coach was my head of performance when I was at London.

“I know that he will have adapted some things from his time working with me and from how they’re playing, there are some elements there that I can see.

“What I do know with Mike [Eccles] is that he’s very much a disciplinarian.

“They’ll compete, they’ll have plenty of energy and plenty of enthusiasm because that’s the sort of standards that he’ll expect from them.

“We’re going to be up against a team who are highly-motivated this week also.”