I for one have been critical of the club about lack of communication with the fans . The club are dammed if they do & dammed if they do not !

S-O what would you put out next week before the York game , do not want to have issues with you , but everything seems very black & white .

www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/sport/rugby-league COYD

www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/sport/rugby-league COYD

I always look forward to getting the squad news on a Friday afternoon. I'm not overly bothered about match reports as I've probably either seen the game or watched the Twitter feeds. I quite like reading the coach's comments afterwards.

Thanks Danensian. I love rugby and the Dons. I hope by doing some pre-game analysis that it adds to people's interest and hopefully encourages more people to come on here and share their views with us.

It must be a nightmare being a coach - seeing your team give away penalties. I listened to the Keighley game on the radio last weekend and they were giving penalties away all the time. Mike Emmett spent more time talking to the referee in the 80 minutes of the match than most of us spend talking to our wives in a week!

Let's hope we can sort our discipline for the York game.

Yes they have to put something out ... but what they are putting out is dross.
e.g. Player X says "We have to step up to the plate, cut out the silly mistakes and complete our sets.
We know it will be tough because York are a good side and they are hard to beat on their home patch.
They have struck a bit of form and even though they lost they put in a good effort at Barrow.
They will be looking to hold onto 4th place and it won't be easy for us."

"But if we complete our sets kick well and stick to our game plan then we have a good chance."

Sound familiar?

How about ...

"We are going there to win and fully expect to!"
"So get ready York!"

Oh no, that might rev York up and a few of us might go there and cheer the Dons on.

No far better to prevaracate.

Stand-Offish there is an easy solution to your problem. Don't read it.

But how would I know whether it's dross or not ... unless I read it?

Louis Sheriff available , no further action to his sin binning v Workington .

COYD

That's good news. Can we knock off the three tries that Workington scored whilst he was in the bin too?

Well perhaps if RH had intervened and addressed the problem at the time by reshuffling his cards better those tries may have not all have been scored and the game won by the Dons.

Perhaps he did and it failed.
I wasn't there.

But It's a fairly weak argument for a coach to claim that one man down for ten minutes should have made all that difference.
Except that it did happen during that ten minutes.
So the link can be made for a coach looking for excuses.

Harsh?
I care not.

I am not a fan of a fatalistic view of things as though there is little that could have been done.

You can change outcomes by intervention.

www.thestar.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/doncaster-dons COYD

www.thestar.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/doncaster-dons COYD

One of the criticisms I had of Gary Thornton was that he didn't seem to be able to make in game decisions that could make a difference to the outcome of a match. In my opinion, the difference between an "okay coach" and a "good coach" can often be this.

I wasn't at the Workington game either but listened to the radio commentary. The commentator said the players heads seemed to go down after the first try. Whether that was the cause of the second and third tries, I don't know.

But you take my point.
I know guys communicate by radio nowadays and sit like spectators up in the gods for a better view and then relay to guys sitting in the dugout.
Even the great Daryl Powell.

St John bless him was a touchside coach and you could see his interventions.

The link is not as obvious with some of these modern coaches ... give me a coach prowling the touchline like Tony Fisher did anytime .
Barking instructions and showing his passion.

But that's just me.

As for heads going down after one try of a sinbinning, as a coach I would be furious.

The players know they have to ride out the ten minutes and regroup and yes try a little harder for a short time and cover for their mate.

That is more an indicator of a brittle side and truth be told under a lot of pressure at the time of sinbinning anyway.
And as I coach, I would never say that my players had let their heads drop and that furthermore, I had just then watched them with no explanation.

Yes, absolutely, I take your point. I often wonder what words of wisdom are being passed onto the players every time someone comes onto the field and I wonder whether it has benefits or whether it confuses them.

I can understand why a coach prefers to be in the stands as it's often easier to see the bigger picture from up there but the compromise is that the players aren't getting the guidance first hand.

I've never been a coach at any level so I'm probably not in the best position to judge but if I were a coach I'd want an outstanding team leader on the pitch to help with most of the in-game thinking. All the best coaches will have a top organiser on the pitch. I think Castleford probably have a few including Luke Gale and Grant Millington.

The type of messages I'd send out as coach would be simple commands like: increase line speed, condense the defense, attack the left edge more, close down their play-maker, speed up the play the balls, don't let them scoot from dummy-half, get it wider quicker, etc.

You can't start re-inventing the wheel during a match but you can help the team to focus on which aspects of the game they really need to concentrate on. My words of wisdom after a try has been conceded would be: Get your heads up and make sure you score next! Go and do it!!

But I'm just a man in the stands. I really wouldn't like to be a coach.

Some good points of interest here and the one word that sticks out for me in the above posts is BRITTLE. IMO we do lack someone to take the game by the scruff of the neck and give the rest of the side a timely boost. That's were I think the French bloke could be a vital cog, if as posted (elsewhere) he spends sometime with us next season from Hull.