Nice talking to you up in the restaurant today tattyfield.
I intend to stick to what I said.

Goodbye Dons, I kept my part of the deal, you just took the p/ss.
Hunslet beat Keighley away.

Thornton don't give us any shi/t about winning next week.
Ain't gonna happen.

I think that we've all known deep-down that we were probably no better than the 4th best side in the league. What we saw today proved that. Barrow have got better whilst we've got worse (since we last played them).

Even if we'd had all players fit today, we wouldn't have won. Barrow were far bigger than us and we couldn't cope with the physicality. The same applied in the defeat at home to York. When that happens the discipline goes too.

It's probably hard for Gary Thornton to declare that he's not getting the backing from the club, if that is the case. If he has got the backing of the club, we have to question why he recruited so many players that aren't good enough to get us out of this league.

I'm not against trying to develop youngsters but you've got to have players like Liam Harrison and Oliver Wilkes around. For the second year running, we've very seriously under-estimated the quality of the opposition. With one promotion place up for grabs next season, there needs to be very serious investment in the team or else we'll still be in this division in 2018 and the supporter base will be dwindling to nothing, especially with the awful fixture scheduling this league has.

I agree it is difficult for any coach to speak out if not supported by the board , however if rumour is fight he was offered a half back from hull for today, if true then he should walk.

As I stated earlier in the thread, I couldn't attend today. Whilst the result wasn't a surprise, the twitter updates didn't make good reading. The saddest thing for me is that at one time I hated missing games, win, lose or draw. Today, it didn't feel like it mattered. I expected a loss and I expected it to effectively kill our season.

The fixture scheduling is the same for everyone.

Championship one is not a league I enjoy watching rugby mainly due to the format, the thought of another season in it depresses me, I need to see major intent from the club for me to retain any enthusiasm to keep going next season.
If club Doncaster don't want to commit then can we be Independent again. I would rather be fan run like other clubs are, that way your expectations aren't so high.

So how would you change the format ?

Play each other home and away, winners gain automatic promotion , and a play off for 2nd promotion spot between 2-5, with alternate home and away games.

Or the top 2 get promotion.

The problem with the format is that the other two leagues have played 23 league games, we've played 16 league games.

There are too many gaps between home games and many of those games are uncompetitive games against teams we will easily beat. We've only seen three games this season against "proper" opposition: Barrow twice and York once.

It's not gripping enough to keep the die-hard fans happy, never mind creating interest among the non-regular fans. The slogan "every minute matters" doesn't apply to this league because "most minutes don't matter".

In the regular season, we never saw Toulouse, Rochdale, Keighley, or Hunslet at the Keepmoat. A proper league sees all teams play each other at home and away. A proper league would have a structure where you don't go ages without a home match. Between 25th April and 31st July, 13 weeks, we've played 4 home games.

It may be difficult to make the league competitive unless you reduce it to eight teams where everyone plays each other home and away twice, but the fixture scheduling is about as bad as it can get.

I've not been for 2 seasons now and not missed it although I do still follow it on here but I never believed Carl's talk of promotion to super league because of the lack of credible or even fit signings and yes I do remember his watch this space comments about the fantastic signings we were in the progress of getting but if the rumours from last season were true after cookie left that both Graham Steadman and Deryck Fox both offered their services and were turned down tells you everything you need to know about club Doncaster
P.S. If I ever win the euro millions we will be back at tattersfield

your coach when at York did exactly the same with D/R and wouldnt play the Hull players so Hull pulled out for the following season.
Even Jamie Shaul couldnt get a game at York

Same here,all the best mate.Maybe we'll get there someday.

GT does appear to be a pretty dour individual which seems to be reflected in his tactics and general RL outlook. It seems to me younger, more 'enthousiastic' blood would do wonders for the squad...

I've no doubt that Paul Cooke is a very good coach. I don't feel I know enough yet about Gary Thornton to make a proper judgement although some aspects of what has gone on this season have given me some cause for concern.

What I do know is that no matter how good a coach may be, if the players are a considerable way below the levels required, the coach won't be able to do all that much about it.

The recruitment was all wrong last season. The recruitment this season has been the same. That's where our biggest failing has been. Whoever is responsible for the recruitment is the person who needs to take responsibility for the situation we're in. That may be the coach, it may be the board, it may be both. We will probably never know.

I fully understand the frustration of supporters as we've bought into what the club was telling us they were trying to do. It is going to be much more difficult to convince fans that things will be right for next season.

I believe our aim for this season should have been to get in the top two, not the top four. Only two teams go up, not four. We aimed too low.

Take a look at next season, Toronto look sure to take one of the promotion places. Assuming Toulouse and Rochdale go up this season, and Workington and Whitehaven come down, there will be one promotion place between:

Barrow, York, Hunslet, Keighley, Dons, Workington and Whitehaven. We might even have to add Skolars to that list of contenders as they seem to be improving season-on-season.

Winning promotion next season is going to be extremely tough. The recruitment needed to be top of that list is going to have to be much, much better than we've seen of late. We're starting from a position of weakness, not a position of strength. The changes for next season are going to have to be on a similar scale to the changes from last season. Too many current players simply aren't good enough to get us out of this league.

I've always loved my rugby and I'll always be a Dons supporter come what may but I haven't enjoyed this season due to the ridiculous fixture schedule, the league format, and to a lesser degree the fact that I've never really believed we'd be good enough to go up.

We all need some reassurances right now that genuine investment in players will be made for next season, and that our aim is to be in the top two, not just reach the play-offs. The proof of the pudding will be in the signings and I guess that the majority of fans will only believe the intentions once the signings have been made, and not before.

The club probably won't be giving up hope on us going up this season so no news about next season will be imminent. With lots of luck and a favourable wind, there's probably a 5% chance we could go up this season, but I rate our chances as no better than that. At this stage in the season, I would have hoped I'd have been able to give us at least a 50% chance of going up.

The Barrow defeat should have opened eyes as to where we're really at, if that was needed before yesterday's game.