Doncaster RLFC: Dons '˜heading into season stronger than last one'

Doncaster RLFC No 2 Peter Green claims the club is better placed than at this time last year following the last of their pre-season warm-up games at the weekend.
Peter GreenPeter Green
Peter Green

Despite the League One club losing both games against Championship outfits London Broncos and Batley Bulldogs, both of whom are expected to be challenging for a top-four spot this season, Green said he was pleased with the effort shown by the players.

“Even though the two games were friendlies they were both very competitive,” he told the Free Press.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“As was the case against London the week before I thought that we gave a good account of ourselves against Batley and if we had tidied up our game a little bit we’d have competed even better.

“Batley fielded a strong squad and had number of players who have played a lot of games at Championship level and I think they’ll do well this year.

“I think we’ve benefitted from playing two Championship sides rather than basically Super League Academy teams with a handful of senior players because they play a different type of rugby.

“Batley were a big physical side and they’ll be similar, though obviously stronger, to some League One sides we’ll play this season so it was a useful workout.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In both games the Dons lasted the pace well and arguably finished the stronger side.

“Even when we went 36-16 down midway through the second half after they had gone on top of us for a spell, I never thought that they would run away with the game in the last quarter,” said Green.

“I was always confident that we could get back with them if we controlled the ball better – albeit you are always more exposed to the elements at the athletics track compared to the Keepmoat and it was quite windy on the day.

“We’ve scored some good tries in both our games but, as was often the case last year, we didn’t build as much pressure as we would liked to have done.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“Most of the errors, which were spread across the board, were individual mistakes mainly due to a lack of concentration and the players speaking afterwards were annoyed with themselves.

“That’s obviously something that we need to work on in training between now and the start of the season a fortnight on Sunday.

“What we did do on Sunday was to take our chances well and we were very clinical in our finishing.”