Doncaster RLFC: Richard Horne reflects on heavy defeat to London Broncos

He is also likely to reflect on Sunday’s 64-6 home defeat against newly-promoted Super League side London Broncos.

He told The Star: “We’ve done it tough again. We only had a squad of 18 players against their 30 and we picked up three injuries and we were down to one sub in the second half.

“We knew that they would bring a strong side as it was their only pre-season game.

“Because we were down on numbers we had to bring in some young kids, such as Hull FC full-back Connor Wynne and Charlie Patterson – a City of Hull Academy lad.

“I thought Connor was solid at full-back. He’s still learning the game so we knew he’d get a little bit lost at times but overall I was pleased with what he did.

“Unfortunately he didn’t have a chance to show what he could do in attack because we had so little possession. I think they had something like 42 sets and we had 20 so we had to do double the defensive work.

“Charlie did a great job for us in the second-row, He played a lot of minutes and I think he handled himself really well considering how young he is.

“Although we only really created the one scoring chance, which we took well in the second half, I thought some of our try-line defence was very good. But when they moved the ball to the edges they capitalised on some one-on-one misses.

“They scored some soft tries at the end but I could forgive that as we’d lost (stand-off) Jordan Howden at that stage and we were busted.

“Some of our middles (forwards) had played lot of minutes and that took its toll but will benefit them going forward in terms of fitness.”