Doncaster Knights: Clive Griffiths expecting better in return clash with Yorkshire Carnegie

'It was a game of two halves,' said the Welshman reflecting on Carnegie's 33-20 win in the game played at Hull Ionians.

'We were all over the place in the first half, and I'm not blaming the 12 noon kick-off because you can't say that they adapted better than we did.

'The simple fact is that we didn't play nearly as well as we have been doing and came in 26-3 down which flattered them because they'd not had to do much.

'They kicked four scrum penalties and scored two tries one from an interception and the other after we had been turned over coming out of our 22 and one pass later they scored again.

'We spoke about having to regroup during the interval and we played a lot better after the break and won the second half by a comfortable margin and were unlucky not to come away with a try bonus point. So there were a lot of good things to come out of the last 40 minutes.

'If we had had that belief in the first half then it could have been a lot different. I'm certainly expecting it to be more different on Saturday.

'I just hope the weather holds and we are able to express ourselves a bit better and that it will be a much better game to watch with a lot less whistle.

'I would say that it was close to Carnegie's strongest team on Saturday, which wasn't the case with ourselves, but we hope to have the likes of fly-half Kurt Morath and No 8 Josh Tyrell available again after being away for the last month on international duty but we'll be without second-rower Nick Civetta who will be out for several weeks.

'We were struggling at fly-half and had to play (full-back) Cameron Cowell because with Charlie Foley being injured and Kurt being away and Brett Connon having being recalled by Newcastle, we had no-one else who could play there except young Seth Adams who came off the bench in the final quarter for his senior debut.'