Fans Panel Meeting
Thursday 10th January 2019


AttendeesThe critical aspect of the minutes is

As part of the meeting, Carl Hall confirmed that this season, the club had negotiated and paid for an enhanced agreement with Hull for D/R and loan players
The agreement will guarantee that should any players on loan or D/R get injured or be recalled to Hull’s first team, then Hull will ensure the Dons receive a replacement player of similar ability if required by Richard Horne

My view is:

The weaknesses of DR/Loans in the past is that we have not been able to rely on it, and Hull have not provided players when we needed them most. This should not happen in the future with the enhanced agreement; an agreement that comes with a price tag.

No names were mentioned as to which players may be coming on DR/Loan but it's important to note that in order for players to be 'qualified' for the play-offs they need to play at least five league games. My preferred choice would be to have as many Hull players qualified for the play-offs as possible to give us the broadest amount of cover possible when we're likely to need it most.

The club is also looking to add to our own squad of players (as mentioned in the minutes) to boost our numbers further.

The quality of players within the Hull squad was shown by their performance in the game against us. As we can have up to five Hull players in our match day squad, the 'quality' that comes from Hull should greatly enhance our chances this season.

Thanks...can I check...is the bold bit about the arrangements with Hull the announcement we've been waiting for today?

Yes, that's right. I don't know if the club are going issue a separate statement on the website as only forum readers will be aware of it at the moment.

Does this agreement mean we will receive a few of the first team squad player when not selected for Hull or the academy lads?

We weren't given specific details as to who may or may not be coming but as the arrangement seems to have come at a significant price, I would hope the price we've paid will be represented in the quality of players who come.

I would have personally preferred The Dons to have used the "Significant Cost" to sign our own players, rather than paying Hull FC. If they are our players they train with the squad every single week and get used to the players around them and gel as a side.

I do have a sneaky suspicion that some or part of this fee will have been the transfer fee we supposedly received for Liam Harris.

If Hull FC have another injury crisis I cannot see them sending us players at the expense of their own results, the deal will be weighted in our East Yorkshire Taskmasters favour.

Dual Reg will be the end of DRLFC.

I agree that in a perfect world we should be investing in players of our own but it is difficult to get the better quality players (who may be dropping down from Super League) to come to a League One club. They would rather play in the Championship, even if offered the same pay. Hence why we probably lost out to Halifax and Leigh.

Hull had their fingers burnt last season with their 'squad size' and along with the fact they planned on having a reserve team, they're not short on depth this time around. There should be plenty of players available to come to Donny.

We will wait and see DM, other teams in the Championship don't seem to have an issue recruiting, neither did York, Bradford last year or Toronto in the previous year, if we are a "cash rich" club surely the money should have been spent on a sustainable team rather than short team fixes with borrowing players from SL.

So basically we’re paying Hull to ensure we have access to 5 DR players each week and if 1 gets injured they send us another... isn’t that what’s ment to happen anyway ?? wouldn’t it just be better to just sign our own players... as soon as Hull get injuries the better DR players will be recalled for their team and were left with ones that are no better than what we have, the same as last season.... unless we’re going to have for example Maloudi, Litten, Harris and C Scott available every week then it’s a waste of time and money.

We're going to have to see what this means in the real world I guess.

A positive thing in there is that the club intend to have 21/22 players signed before the start of the season. I am guessing Dixon will be one of them following his trial appearances

Totally agree , we need quality week in week out from Hull as our own short comings have been highlighted over the last two weekends.

For me we need a big aggressive prop who can do long minutes , with the rule changes for 2019 the days of rotating props every twenty minutes will be much fewer than in previous years.
We also lack creativity and the likes of Miloudi would go a long way to helping us challange the top sides.

Bradford and Toronto were probably exceptions, Steve. York, to their great credit, did extremely well.

The one big benefit that I see in the arrangement is that we will definitely have access to five good quality players in every game, and that must come with Hull's blessing. I felt we went with our begging bowl in the past. At least we've moved things onto a more equal footing now.

Had we had five players from Hull in our squad last season when we played Workington (instead of none), there's a fair chance we would have won; had we lost we might have won the extra play-off game against the Championship side.

A few more signings of our own won't go amiss but this arrangement means that the DR/Loan system with Hull has the best possible chance of working. The old system from last year was clearly broken and needed fixing.

I thought that we'd got a better relationship with Hull in the past than we actually had. Their willingness to help out was found lacking when we needed them most. At least we've got a deal that should stop us being in a bad place at the end of this season, or at any time during it too.

Until we see which types of players will be coming, it's hard to draw any further conclusions at this stage.

I agree with KLD, a big prop and Mr Miloudi would be a good start.

I don't think we have fixed anything it seems on the surface like we have paid Hull to honour the dual registration agreement we already had in place, and I still maintain the "expense" of this arrangement is nothing more than wooden dollars to cover the money we never got from Hull for Liam Harris (if there ever was a transfer fee or if he really ever was 100% our player.).

I would say that Workington, Oldham and Gateshead have strengthened better than us in the offseason, and I cannot see there budgets being massively greater than ours, if at all.

We will have to see but as the "majority" of our coaches income will come from Hull FC, is he going to knowingly sabotage there chances to help little old Doncaster?

I thought the same as you. You'd have thought the 'old arrangement' would have provided up to 5 players each week. It clearly didn't and a better arrangement was needed.

There are 32 players (with squad numbers) in the Hull squad. Here are the ones outside the 1 to 17:

19 Matongo, 20 Fash, 21 Manu, 22 Lane, 23 Paea, 24 Logan, 25 Langtree, 26 Bienek, 27 Miloudi, 28 Litten, 29 Nzoungou, 30 Washbrook, 31 Harris, and 32 Cameron Scott.

We might get three of those and two of the younger kids? We don't really know who might be coming but there's a lot of decent talent in there.