‘That’s not us’ – Horne blasts Dons’ display in Whitehaven defeat

The Dons trailed 12-0 at half time but collapsed in the second half as their Championship opponents ran in 11 unanswered tries in total.

Whitehaven are four games into their league campaign, while the Dons do not start their League One season until March 27.

“It’s not acceptable to end up getting beat the way we did," said Horne.

“It became too easy for them to play through us and that’s not what we’re about.

“We’ve got four weeks now before our first league game and there is a lot for us to work on up to that point.

“We’ve been a bit stop start in our pre-season with games in between and now we’ve got a clear run for the league campaign.”

Centre Sam Smeaton said the defeat was a painful reality check ahead of the new League One season.

“We’re all hurting after that,” he said.

“It was a tale of two halves really. I thought we had a good spell on their line and just didn’t manage to crack them. We were really positive.

“In the second half, fatigue set in and it just went from bad to worse. It just didn’t work.

“One of the few positives to come out of it was getting 80 minutes into the lads’ legs and picking up no injuries.

"We were probably trying a bit too hard, trying things we’d not normally do and not sticking to systems, which just does not work well.

“We’ll stick together, we’ve got four weeks now and we know where we’re at.”