'It's made it tough' - Dons' coach makes honest play-off admission

The Dons, who had been relying on a glut of home games during the run-in to boost their top-six hopes, suffered a second successive defeat at the stadium and remain seventh.

“There are five teams all chasing the two remaining play-off spots and we’ve got to win our last three games and hope that other results also go our way,” said Horne, whose side would have gone joint fifth had they won.

"It’s made it tough (to get into the top six) because we’ve got three very tough games starting with fourth-placed Oldham at Boundary Park and then home games against (leaders) York and sixth-placed Halifax.

“We know the challenge we are facing and we can’t have performances like today and against Featherstone. It was very disappointing in that it was a game we allowed to get away from us. They didn’t have to work for most of their tries.

“I thought that we were dominant for long periods and created a lot of chances and made four or five clean line breaks in addition to the tries but didn’t finish them. Whereas Barrow, who I don’t think really threatened us, capitalised on the limited chances they had.

“They also scrambled very well and denied (Edene) Gebbie what would have been a late long-range try - although his hamstring tightened up while he was running to the line.

“He was fantastic again. He’s the one who is always a threat with ball in hand. We want him in the game and we try to get him involved as much as possible.

“Pauli Pauli’s a threat when we are on the front foot but he’s a big man and he’s going to burn out so we have to utilise him right.

“We made mistakes with the ball, which, as I say led to several of their tries, but that’s down to pressure. We started pushing passes to try and get back into the game after going down 18-0 in the first 20 minutes, although I didn’t feel that we always needed to do that.

“We still felt that we were in the game at half-time despite trailing 24-6 because we had been creating chances and had we scored early on when Jacob Jones knocked on I think we’d have gone on to win the game,” said Horne who was pleased with the efforts of back-rower Luis Johnson who showed good leg speed in his longest outing yet in Doncaster colours.