Dewsbury will need to have a good close season to be competitive (IMO) they have released a lot of players and a lot of their main players are getting on a bit, depends on their investment I guess.

Workington are always competitive and although they've hit financial trouble this year and had a tough year on the pitch they always seem there or thereabouts. I'd suggest the biggest threat as things stand for next year is North Wales and someone like Hunslet spending some.

As I understand it, Keighley have a wealthy backer who has no family so is spending it all on his team while he can. They're knocking down their main stand and doing a rebuild

I agree we'd have been in a much better place with two more props and a full-back. In all the years we've been in this division, this has been a common theme: not enough power in the forwards and no real expert full-back.

We can overcome the lesser lights in the division but when tackling the better sides, these shortcomings find us out.

One other point that needs to be considered is that should we get promoted next season we don't want to have to make wholesale changes to that squad when we go up. Keighley have got a squad together that should be competitive in the Championship and this is what we should aim to do.

I don't think we should under-estimate the difference in quality between the Championship and League One.Getting up is the easy bit, staying there is the hard part as I suspect Swinton will find out, unless they bring in five or six better quality players.

To be honest, the present Dons team would not cope with the Championship physicality, intensity and pace. That is why I feel we need to bring in more than two or three better quality players now... providing we can attract them to the club. Keighley did it so I suspect it's money that talks, not necessarily the league you're in.

Yes, let's start with a couple of props and a full-back but we should aim to do more.

Yes, I class those three as the bare minimum but agree with everything you have said

Dunno what I will do next season, I tend to buy a season ticket because at £60 they are cheap.
But I can't get to all home games unless I spend £30 in diesel making a special round trip from Sewerby....
So dunno....Dons need to sign a couple of marquee players for me to be revved up...
Our halves did not step up at Swinton or we would have won.

To be fair S-O Swinton did their homework and didn't fall for the show n go from Johnston, once that's not an option we lack the creativity to do much else other than BARGE!!! We brought Watson on and stuck him at acting half he was rarely involved in open play which is a shame as he has the ability to create magic.

What typified it for me was 2 mins to go, we have the ball and we do a one-out wasted drive with Smeets, shows there is no plan B in place, you could argue there is barely a Plan A at times. The defence overall was pretty solid and Travis did very well under the highballs they lofted, he has pace to burn just wished we used him more.

We play a very percentage game we don't seek to make chances to score we wait for the opposition to drop off tackles.

Carl Hall video from the Swinton match:

[urlhttps://twitter.com/media_mgmt_/status/1576940600921710592?s=46&t=E_RlMm4w6cpGJtN2vu4QVw[/url

"We will give the play offs a miss next year" I hope you are correct Mr Hall and not blowing smoke'

The early announcement of players retained and some statement signings in the coming weeks would be a statement of intent, rather than it all being done last minute and based on "whos left" or as previously mentioned the Craig Harrison Winter Sale.

From the fans Facebook page. The fans meeting will take place now on the 22nd November, due to the recruitment questions that will arise, its been moved to that date in order for Hall and Horne to update regarding recruitment. Thy are said to be dealing with that right now.

Not sure when the original date for the fans meeting was due to take place, if it had been announced I had not seen the proposed date.

You would have thought the Dons' website would be the place to advise when meetings are to take place and to report the minutes but nothing is ever posted on there.

Good communication is about reaching out to as many people as possible but for some reason this never happens. Readers of this forum will be among those who take the greatest interest in the club. If we don't know what's happening, then I doubt potential new fans will have much clue at all as to what's going on.

The poor attendance at the play-off semi-final was another prime example of Club Doncaster not promoting/marketing/communicating with the fans very well. The biggest home game of the season saw 628 attend and quite a few of those were from Rochdale.

We'll were not sure about this Ethan chap does he work for the club or not?

The very fact Richard horne is in his FIFTH year as doncaster coach with no promotions and no visible improvement echoes the point we are a stale, unambitious, old boys club. Which other club would of kept with the same coach who has failed for 5 years? I've never witnessed a workplace like this where there's zero accountability yet still ask for our undivided support! We're simply mugs

See we loose our best players but no one ever head hunts our coach mmmmmh

Swinton Lions enter a Dual-Registration agreement with St Helens.

Probably out of necessity in an effort to stay up.