Dons boss satisfied with win over Oxford

The home side, watched by club legends from five decades and coach Tony Fisher who steered them to the top flight in the mid-90s, ran up their highest points tally of the season to keep the pressure on leaders Rochdale.

“I would have taken a win by 40 points at the start and it helped boost our points difference which isn’t as good as some of the other teams up there with us,” said head coach Gary Thornton.

“We scored some good tries and could have probably had a couple more had our execution been better out wide. We got off to a great start, though it was disappointing to lose Mike Kelly in the first minute, and we scored three early tries.

“But I was a bit disappointed with the way we let them back into the game with two tries; we seemed to switch off a bit and I don’t think we made them work hard enough for any of their three tries.

“But Oxford showed a bit of spirit and ran they never stopped trying. As I said in the build-up they are a much better side than when we played them here in pre-season.

“We’ve now got a week off before we travel to Toulouse on Saturday week and we’ve got one or two players carrying bumps and bruises, so we’ll look at them this week.

“We’ll also give the players a bit of a rest and we’ll just train Tuesday and Thursday this week and give them Friday off.”