same here

Same from me..

cant see any problem re frost , get down the KM today give the lads your support.

looked a bettet side in the last half hour when they decided to throw the ball about. Too much one man rugby in first half, too many missed tackles. Thought Paul Cooke looked good in patches but needs more games under his belt before we see the best of him.Got nothing from the ref, they continually held down,and he missed a few high tackles. Think last half hour showed reason to be optimistic about championship 1 season though.

Agree with everything you said mate. The Dons just could not get in the game in the first half either Laughton giving nothing or the Dons making mistakes and giving York 2 tries after mistakes by China and Waterman. Thorman was given too much of an easy game and the Dons left it too late to get the ball out wide in the second half. Castle was the best forward on the pitch but Kesik needs to lose a stone and get fit. He just seems happy to play the ball and hardly creates anything like the Cook we had a few years ago.

yes you couldn,t really argue with castle as man of the match, worked very hard.

Discipline & defense cost us the game in the first half.

Ronnie was his usual self (crap), we cannot blame him for everything . Much improved display in the 2nd half Butts, Lawton & Castle showed up well. Still think we need an option at 7.
York were quicker at the play the ball , Thorman ran the show for them .
Will be interesting to see the preferred 17 for the fist league game.

Baring in mind we played 4 days ago, at this stage of the season, against a team in the division above who were fresh as daisies, and the outstanding bad luck we had at times. To get a bonus point says a lot for us.

I am not down heartened, York were better than us, as they should be, and but for a couple of key moments anything could have happened.

Disagree with the kesik comment. I was at gateshead and he made a few clean breaks and defended hard. Maybe he didnt have his best game but you cant have one every week. A few people missing and carrying knocks from midweek but still a good team performance!

Donny 11 thought the team changes were due to rotation .

I agree with you, arguably a quiet game for him, but he has been one of our most creative and hard working players for the last 2 years in my opinion

Mike Emmett had a poor game for him, think the young ex HKR hooker offers more in the hooking role . We havent seen anything of Ely in a competative game either.

Agreed powley is quick from dummy half but lacks in defence. He didnt do a thing against gateshead only played 20 mins and then dropped this game says alot.

Ok I didnt go to Gateshead so I will concede on that one.
It was noticable that York were much quicker around the ruck area .

Still think we have a good squad , better with cover for 6/7.

COYD

No complaints regarding the score, got beat by a better side on the day and I hope a few lessons learnt. Cook needs game time, we fell off too many first off hits, there off loading game showed our tackle technique up as did there play of the ball. Fair bit all in all for TM to work on. This game was my first view of The Dons 2012 and I have to say even though it's early in the season, the first half performance wiil not be good enough for a top four place. I realise it should improve and we won't meet a side as lively as York every week but not a great advert IMO and will take more than that to attract the lost supprt back. Thorman will never get an easier ride at 6 than this game and that hurts, he could have played on one leg for all the damn time he got.

Little snippet of one of the photos from today..

Think old one eye Ronnie was poor for both sides, most Knights supporters were saying Thorman had a quiet game which I thought he did compaired to last season, on todays performance dont think you will be far off this season, good luck.

On the positive side, we won the second half and we defended much better than the first half.
I thought we didn't have the bounce of the ball very much and there wasn't that much in it at the end, although I think York were quite content to run at 80% throttle in the second half, knowing the game was as good as won. So we shouldn't get too carried away with the second half revival.
They are a division above us and looked fit and lively, so we shouldn't be too disappointed. However this was the game in this group that must have been targeted as a win, and we lost.

Castle was the stand out forward and is showing fitter looking guys (no gay reference

) completely up.
Please note other Dons forwards ... it's called effort and enthusiasm!

What struck me was the difference between York's defence and ours.
York were up fast in one unified line and into our faces, going forward into the tackle. Result ... we got about 4 yards per play.
Doncaster let them come to us and defended on the backfoot with no forward momentum. Result ... York made double that every play. You are asking for it if you defend like we did.

700 crowd, that's good, but they were treated to a pathetic first half. The guy behind me had obviously come to have a look see and was going to walk out if York had scored again after that soft second half offload try to their right winger.
But we fought back and he stayed. I doubt he will be there for the Eagles game along with about 200 others.
That's over £2,000 lost.
What a shame.

Two games in 4 days ... total bollox ... and don't get me started about Laughton.
COYD

PS They weren't going to catch Cunningham were they?


Also ... who was the guy in the black scrum cap playing down the left in the second half for the Dons? He played really well.

yes they did look fitter(im not gay either) and faster, but as i said after the sheffield game the Dons dont appear to help themselves by continually turning their backs to get back the 10 after a tackle, sheffield quickly found out to head for the slowest to retreat. you cant tackle if youcant see them. also when york tackled they peeled off in singles giving defenders valuable time to form the line 10 back(which was usually about. eight ) .its a lesson we should learn, i think thats why the forwards didnt make much ground.

Im not to dissapointed I dont like NRC id use it as friendlies if I was TM try things and players, to me if we get throught these games with no injuries and are fighting fit for league campaign im happy

It's nice to win everytime you play, but as long as we get the team working in time to hit the ground running for the league games is all that really matters. At least the next couple of games we are testing ourselves against teams who in theory should be better than ourselves.

Personally i would have been down hearted if we had started strong then died completely at the end of the match, but we finished the stronger side which is a big plus, Cooke showed he's still got class and after a few more matches he'll be releasing our centres for fun, he's been out of the game for 18 months and managed to get a full 80mins in only his second start is good.
All in all i'm happy.
COYD

p.s
Ronnie Laughton whats the point of that man.

Should we have seperate thread for how bad Laughton is?

It may become the biggest thread on the board. I think theres times the RFL let him ref us because it saves them money paying his expenses from Barnsley...