I
I hope I'm wrong but I have a feeling that Paul will not play much now that he is the coach.

Thought after the 1st ten minutes our standards dropped and Crusaders woke up. Too many penalties and dropped balls. I know this was a friendly and Cookey was trying different players but we need to wake up next week.

I certainly hope Paul Cooke will play more because that was an utter embarrassment (even worse than the crowd). We had a potential new fan with us today and after that shambles I'll be surprised if he returns - I know I wouldn't. Often the players seemed clueless or worse, disinterested. Yes I know a lot of Merrick's officiating was suspiciously one sided for holding down and forward passes but that is still no excuse for that performance.

We will get woken up alright!

Work to do!

Cooke himself was the only stand out player for the Dons, and guess what he took himself off at a critical time.
His replacement was useless!
So a double mistake by Paul.

I thought the team that started were more than good enough we only started struggling when injuries hit and we made substitutions with other players.

it was one of the worst displays for a long time.
the dons sure know how to knock the optimism out of your system.
a massive improvement needed for next week.
I am very disheartened by that today.

Let's keep things in perspective guys.

Winning wasn't the be all and end all today. It was an opportunity for Paul to find things out about his players.

Yes, I'm disappointed with the result and for the most part I was disappointed with the way we lacked penetration when Mark Castle and Brett Waller weren't on the field. That tells me these two guys are key for us. I hope Brett is okay after limping off. We really need him in the team for next week.

We missed Mike Kelly when he went off too. I think he's become an important part of our side.

Until Nev Morrison got side-stepped twice in as many minutes our defence had looked okay. We seemed able to contain them at that stage.

In the second half, they did seem fitter, faster, bigger, and better than us. The key was that when we tackled them, we weren't putting them on their backs to slow the play the ball. They got some momentum going and we struggled to deal with it.

Lots to work on and lots to learn from but surely that's what today was all about. We'd have all been happier if we'd won by 40 but we didn't have our best 13 on the field for most of the game, and if we had, I think it would have been different.

Didn't really see brett do anything in the short time he was on the pitch. Will be a loss though