Doncaster Knights: Morgan Eames is in determined mood ahead of Championship Cup clash at Jersey

Knights go into the game lying second behind relegated Premiership outfit Newcastle Falcons, having won two of their opening three games.

Sadly, for the South Yorkshire side, their league form hasn’t been nearly as impressive and they currently languish in the bottom three of the Championship with just two wins from six.

“It’s certainly been a frustrating season so far,” admits second-rower Morgan Eames, ahead the club’s second visit of the season to the Channel Islands.

Knights go into the Jersey game on the back of a 22-9 home defeat by Ealing.

“Even though we lost I don’t think you can fault the team defensively because we defended really well on the day.

“We had last week off last which gave players time to get over some of the knocks they had been carrying before reporting back at the start of the week. Hopefully we can return to winning ways over there.

“We beat them at home in the Championship Cup in our first game of the season at Castle Park but we lost 27-0 when we played them over there in the league. I don’t think the score reflected the game with two of their tries coming late on when we had two players in the sin-bin.

“I’m confident there won’t be a repeat of that scoreline this weekend and even though they are currently going well in the league and are a pretty strong side.

“We’ve made a good start to the Championship Cup competition and are hoping to reach the knockout stages.

“We set ourselves a target going into the opening three games and we met that target and we’ve set ourselves another target going into the final three and hopefully we can also meet that even though there are no easy games in our remaining pool games.

“It’s always tough over in Jersey and Newcastle put 50 past us up there and will be hard to beat in the return next month. Hartpury can also be difficult to beat down at their place, so we know we are going to have to play well in all three games.

“We have been struggling with injuries and suspensions in recent weeks, particularly in the second row, and we’ve had to bring players in some of whom are not used to playing at Championship level.

“Even though we haven’t been scoring a lot of tries in recent weeks we don’t let our heads go down if, for instance, we go a couple of tries down in a game. It’s tough in those sort of situations but we don’t stop fighting and that will be the case on Saturday.”