Doncaster Knights: Hooker Ben Hunter wants to make Castle Park a fortress - starting with Bedford Blues clash

Knights are badly in need of a victory after successive defeats and finishing empty-handed in terms of bonus points following a winning start at Hartpury.

“We felt that we had got off to a decent start winning two of our three Championship Cup games Pool 2 games – obviously the result at Newcastle was disappointing – and winning our opening league game at Hartpury,” said Hunter, man-of-the-match in that game.

“We were disappointed to get beaten by Cornish Pirates in our last home game.

"We are looking to make Castle Park more of a fortress than it has been for the last couple of years.”

Like the rest of his teammates, Hunter was disappointed with both the result and the fact Knights didn’t score in the defeat in Jersey last Friday during which they had three men sin-binned.

“We need to show better discipline as a team – and I include myself in that because I know I need to react better after a poor decision than I did against Pirates when being sin-binned,” he said.

“The injuries we’ve picked up obviously haven’t helped.

“But I think we’ve got more strength in depth this season and when everyone is fit we’ve got a team that should be able to do a job on a lot of sides,” he said.

“We know where we are as a team and that we’ve got a lot to work on but we believe that we can be a competitive side this season and are good enough to be challenging for a top-four spot again.

“We know we need to get our attack going against Bedford and also be a lot stronger in the collision than we have been on a couple of occasions.

“Against Pirates we played well at times but we weren’t consistent over the 80 minutes and let them down. “We need to show up against Bedford and need everyone to do their job.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​