I wasn't at the match (had an hospital appointment today). I got the figures and details from the Whitehaven official Twitter feed. They gave more frequent updates than the Dons' Twitter feed.

They reported at half-time that it was a very poor quality game generally.

Seems like Whitehaven started to get the upper hand when Connor Bower got sin-binned three minutes before half-time. Whitehaven scored at the beginning of the second half whilst he was off.

No names were mentioned but we seemed to infringe a lot at the ruck, messing with the play the ball; presumably trying to slow Whitehaven down.

As Double Movement can also attest to, we have been told on more than one occasion at recent Fans Panel Meetings that RH now has a much better understanding of the opposition in League One, of the players the opposition has and what is needed to achieve the Club's stated desire of promotion.

It has also been suggested that the quality of player available to us on dual registration would be those effectively good enough to play at the top end of the Championship.

So, something isn't adding up ...
2 defeats from the opening 4 league games is hardly promotion form whoever the opposition is and in reality, we played against either 12 or 11 men for periods of the second half against Hunslet and lost a fixture yesterday by 18 points which we won by 9 last season, quite a turnaround.

I can hear phrases like 'nothing is won in March'. Probably not but a promotion aspiration can be seriously damaged early season and a mountain to climb created.

Food for thought ... The two teams which got promoted last season lost 2 games and 3 games from a
26 game regular season. There are less fixtures this season, so less opportunity to make up lost ground later on.

I hope I'm wrong but I fear that there is little margin for further defeats against other promotion candidates unless we are already settling for the lottery of the play offs.

We really do need to get out of this division!

2 defeats out of 4 isn't promotion form, we got out of jail against Gateshead and it does turn out that they are having some issues and their signings haven't panned out as expected. It's clear that they want to gain promotion and are taking steps to achieve it early on.

We lost to Hunslet and by all accounts were bullied off the pitch, questionable tactics maybe, but The Dons have been known to use them in the past as well.

A loss to Whitehaven, never an easy place to go, but with the "assured class" we were supposed to have in the side we should have won, but we didn't.

This enhanced agreement seems to be offering no advantage to us, as the better players we do get end up going on loan to Championship clubs, rather than coming to us to give us the edge in gaining promotion.

I really cannot see how a side can gel and know each other's plays and moves without training together as a team, we don't find out which 3/5 players we are going to get until Hull. I maintain my opinion that these players should be tied to use for a "fixed" period, month loan, season loan or our players, so they feel part of the team.

Time will tell, but I echo Wanderer's sentiment that we need to get out of this division this year, anything less will mean for me a root and branch evaluation of DRLFC from the top to the bottom.

Wanderer is correct. We were told that the use of DR this season would mean we would have players of a higher calibre available, good enough to be playing at the top end of the Championship.

In an earlier post I stated that I would be looking to bring in 'five of the best' from Hull in every game (except against the likes of W Wales and other teams at the bottom) as we can't afford to leave anything to chance. Why did we only bring in three for the Whitehaven game?

As Wanderer also says, we cannot afford to lose many more games or else the top spot is going to quickly become out of reach. The play-offs are a lottery and we shouldn't be relying on them.

We've been struggling to get out of our own half in the recent home games against Hunslet, Workington, and Coventry. This is an issue of utmost importance that Richard Horne needs to address straightaway. We need two more big forwards from Hull in our squad, players who will be able to add some punch to our go-forward.

League express report that Miloudi made a horlicks of a high kick for one try, sloppy tacking contributed to further tries and they made the extra man count when it mattered. (some teams can do that it appears) Poor show by all acounts. We have every reason to be concerned as per the previous posts. Keep this up and we not achieve that opening home fixture crowd figure again this year and that will of of real concern to the club.

There are two camps, the forum and Facebook.
The forum is less populated I feel in terms of Dons supporters than the Fleecebook, which is a much more handy and casual platform.
The forum average age is higher than the Fleecebook Dons supporters average age.
How do I know this, I just do.

The forum members have seen it all before and have a slightly 'world weary view' when it comes to the Dons. The Fleecebook contains members closer to the club, younger and very much 'let's get behind the lads'.

So we are the moaners and they are the optimists.

But should that quieten us?
Not a bit of it.

I was watching the scores come through yesterday as I was watching HKR chuck it away vs Catalans (niggly unnecessary penalties cost them the game.)
We were 4-0 and a big chunk of the game gone.
So I stopped checking thinking it was a tight game and fingers crossed we could nick it.
After HKR had finished, I checked the Dons score, what!?
The 'tight' game was a rout.

That is a rubbish result and our chances of doing anything spectacular have been written off in my head now.
Except of course it is a tight division and the top 6 clubs can beat each other, so maybe no runaway leader/s like last year.

But what a strange carry on?
It's 5 to 1 against us being champs and then we have to fight the play-offs with no certainty about the Hull lads.

Nothing has changed for the better.
We can look forward to Franky and Brad returning, but that's it.

Who would have thought Hunslet would be better than us?

Don't worry, remember the 'Five Year Plan' !!!

I frequesnt both quite regularly and would label myself more pragmatic than optimistic or pessimistic.

Personally I would have taken 2 wins from the first 4 fixtures on paper, not necessarilly expecting the 2 we got the points in but on average. I think that 2 from 4 expectation is the pessimistic tendancy showin through. The optimistic tendancy tells me we this is far fro over, we always lose away at Haven (last season being an exception) so meh to that, I also think it's too early to say which teams are better than which.

I am not overly worried yet but neither am I overly enthused

I'm not worried either.
I just think we are average and really with a division of this quality that is not good.

The fact is we should be in a position given the Hull lads to boss this division and we aren't.

That is down to a weak pack mainly.
And that is down to RH.
Don't rate him as special, never have.

Whoever the coach is problems on the field and indiscipline are down to him, so for a coach to say indiscipline cost us is a cop out and a shifting of responsibility.

It was interesting on the League One podcast from before this weekend the guy from Whitehaven was talking about Doncaster's big mobile pack

With the revised DR deal with Hull, I thought this would be the case too.

Wonder what he thinks after the game.
Never mind anyway, we KNOW they struggle and never forget RB is part of that big mobile pack, and clearly is neither.

I always felt that to show true promotion form we would need 3 wins from the opening 4 league fixtures. Which, to be fair, we could have achieved but for the dreadful performance in the second half against Hunslet. Had that have been a victory, a defeat in Cumbria wouldn't have been the biggest disappointment, although getting beaten by the equivalent of 3 scores after leading at HT does have to beg questions about another poor second half showing resulting in a defeat.

I am concerned but accept there is a fair way to go yet although, there are less games to claw it back this season if we get too far behind.

We're in a results orientated business but I always try to look at how we've played as well as whether we win.

In the Workington game, for example, I felt the result could have gone either way. We got the rub of the green with a couple of our tries. I left the game feeling we were 'competitive' with them but clearly better than them.

In the Hunslet game, they roughed us up and we fell for it, but I'm not confident we can turn that result around when we play them again.

Against Coventry, we looked as though we could get on top but they kept us near our own line too much for my liking.

The Newcastle game was a bizarre one. It's hard to know what to make of it, apart from knowing the lads have a good attitude and never threw in the towel.

Results-wise, two out of four is okay. It looks like quite a lot of teams will be capable of beating each other on the day. But I hoped we'd be the stand-out team in the league with the help we could be getting from Hull.

We've got seven of the 'easier games' coming up over the next few weeks. We shouldn't lose any of those. The three critical games after that could then shape our season against Oldham, Hunslet, and Newcastle. Before then, I suspect our league table position will start to look better but ultimately it's the games against the tougher sides that will determine where we we finish.

The first three could have gone either way, we happened to win two. The newcastle game was a farce and almost impossible to read into; I think we were better than Hunslet on the day but they out scored us which is to their credit; and Workington came down to two long distance efforts, other than that it was a tight affair and almost certainly our best showing so far