Kesik proud as battling Fryston Warriors are denied in Cross Conference Championship Quarter-Final

There were no heads hanging in the Fryston Warriors camp come the full-time whistle at Pinfold Street on Saturday afternoon.

The scoreboard showed a 26-16 victory for a formidable Ince Rose Bridge side in a feisty, full-blooded Cross Conference Championship Play-Off Quarter-Final. But ask anyone who braved the touchlines, and they’ll tell you: Kyle Kesik’s Warriors gave absolutely everything they had left in the tank.

On an afternoon where luck deserted the visitors early doors, Fryston lost three men to injury, which included two outside backs, inside the opening 20 minutes. With the interchange bench effectively wiped out and just one usable substitute to call upon for over an hour of relentless heavy-metal rugby league, lesser sides would have folded.

They also completed ten minutes when reduced to 12 men thanks to the sinbinning of second row Daniel Edwards, and there were times when it took every ounce of effort for players to make the defensive line. But fold they did not. Not Fryston. Not this season.

"Lads have dug deep. We've dug deep all year, so I'm proud of them. I'm happy," defiant Head Coach Kyle Kesik said after the dust had settled.

"Rose Bridge have come from four divisions above where we were. We played some good stuff, scored some class tries, but in the end, we just ran out of energy. You concede a couple of soft tries that don't happen if you've got fresh legs, but when you've got nobody to come on, you can't fault them. They never gave in, and that’s all I can ever ask."

Kesik was quick to highlight a mammoth shift from substitute Reuben Walker, who went toe-to-toe with a bruising Rose Bridge pack.

"He’s got massive energy," smiled Kesik. "We actually had a bit of a go at each other (during the week) when I took him off in our last game! But I apologised to him and said, 'No, that’s the passion I want from my players.' He came back in today, played huge minutes, and really led from the front."

To truly measure how far this Fryston side has come under Kesik, you have to rewind twelve months. After a tough, disjointed spell in the Yorkshire Men’s League, the former Sheffield, Doncaster, Midlands and Keighley man, who once represented his Polish heritage on the international stage, took the reins and immediately set about resetting the culture at the club.

It started with a gritty winter league campaign - a move that proved to be a masterstroke in getting local talent back through the gates.

"We did that winter league and it generated a few players we were missing," Kesik reflected. "It turned a few heads in the area — lads thinking, 'Right, I'll come back to Fryston now.' We were YML last year and things weren't going so well, but the lads regrouped, they bought into what I wanted to build, and you saw the result of that buy-in today."

That winter foundation laid the groundwork for Fryston to step up into the newly restructured NCRL system this term. Placed into a fiercely competitive Yorkshire B conference alongside previously seasoned top-tier outfits, many outsiders doubted whether the Warriors could swim in such deep waters.

They didn't just swim; they made massive waves.

Finishing fourth in Yorkshire B with an impressive record of 10 wins, 3 draws, and just 5 defeats, Fryston proved to be one of the most combative, uncompromising teams in the competition.

"Look, most people didn't want us in the comp," Kesik admitted candidly. "Fryston gets a bit of a tag, doesn't it? But we brought it. The talent in this squad is top-notch, and like I told the boys at the start: if you buy in, we’ll go far. Finishing fourth, three draws, five losses...we weren't far off winning the whole thing."

While the play-off run stops here, the 2026 journey for Kesik’s men is far from finished. With the inaugural 1973 Cup Final still on the horizon at the end of October, the Warriors have every intention of capping off a landmark transitional season with a piece of silverware in the cabinet.

"We’ve got a final to look forward to, so it’s definitely not over yet," declared Kesik. "That 17 dug in until the absolute death today. Every single one of them should hold their head high."

By Dave Parkinson

Photo Credit: 13 Pro-Am Community RL