Richard Horne left ruing Dons' slow start in defeat to Sheffield Eagles

“It was a game we were not expected to win so to come so close and not win is obviously disappointing,” said Horne, whose side drop a place to seventh.

“We need to start better. We dropped three balls in the warm up during the passing drills so to me that shows that the boys weren’t mentally switched on. I’ve told them that they can’t suddenly click a switch when the game starts.

“In contrast to how we started the game, their play was high tempo. We couldn’t control their rucks and their middles ran hard on the back of that.

“They are a quality Championship side and as soon as they get a foot in the door they’ve got some quality players who can really hurt you.

“They fully deserved their 22-6 interval lead and maybe more. Prior to their two late tries we were only 10-0 down and I’d have been fairly happy to have gone in at that because they’d had all that pressure and not really turned it into points due to some errors on their part and our scramble defence.”

He added: “We gave the boys a bit of a kick up the backside at half-time and told them we needed to score first otherwise the game could run away from us.

“Fortunately, we managed to do that and that put some doubt in their heads and we started to gain the momentum by completing (our sets) well and putting them in areas where they had to come out of defence and they didn’t have the energy they had in the first half because of the defending they had to do.

“We kept chipping away and scored another two second half tries, as well as going close on other occasions, and had Connor Robinson not hit the post with the conversion to our last try, we’d have gone level.

“We got another chance in the last couple of minutes and I’d have bet my house on Connor kicking the penalty which would have given us the draw which would probably have been a fair result, but it wasn’t to be.”

Horne was forced to make changes to his pack with hooker Greg Burns ruled out with a hamstring problem and hooker/half-back Joe Lovodua being unavailable due to a family issue. He also decided against playing skipper Sam Smeaton on the artificial pitch in view of the fact he had knee surgery earlier in the season.

He gave a debut to Hull FC loanee Jeylan Hodgson but the teenage hooker came off midway through the first half – Horne feeling that the youngster was finding the pace of the game a bit too quick.

Leigh Leopards’ loanee Lewis Baxter fared better when coming off the bench and impressed the Doncaster boss.

“He put in a massive 60-minute stint for us,” said Horne. “We kept asking him if he wanted to come off but he wanted to stay on and he’s taken over from where Nathan Wilde, who has now joined Widnes with it being nearer to his home, left off.”