FT Dons 6 Toronto 82

Red card - Thackray 75 mins.

Surreal.

I could not watch another moment of that bollox.
A near Super league standard club, artificial in every way, full of mercenaries, beating our lads up with the tacit approval of the three stooges .... nah!

Watched the debacle on TV, totally out played by a full time highly paid and subsidised outfit destined for SL, no malice to Toronto but we and the other Championship clubs are not facing this team on an even playing field.

The way the great sport of RL has been run since the inception of Soooper Dooper League is one of the main factors why I no longer attend matches, its run by cowboys. Wave enough cash at the RFL/SKY and you can break any rule you like, Salary Cap, Overseas players....you name it.


Thought of the day, Toronto is in Canada right, so surely there are limits on the number of Non Canadian players they can have, I think there were only maybe one or two actual Candians on display today...some others may once have said aboot or had some Maple Syrup does that now qualify???

None of the Championship clubs will prosper while ever we are not expected to play on a level playing field, the french last year and now Toronto, who's next The Mexico City Bandits!!!.

It's clear that were on a level playing field then, the salary cap for Championship clubs is 50% of turnover or relevant income....how much income have Toronto got from gate money etc?

Until there is a massive shakeup in the way our sport it run I am done with RL

The French didn't have a choice so don't have a go at them. They would have preferred to have entered the Championship but that would have raised the heckles of certain C1 & C clubs. What happened today should never be allowed to happen, the system is a joke.
SL should be 14 clubs as should the Championship. Wasps are looking to follow Toulouse and Toronto so more of the same next season maybe ?

Well all I can say is that was embarrassing .We were outplayed from when the ref blew his whistle .
BUT WE GAVE IN , there were a few players who tried even our try should have been chalked off.

I didn't expect us to win BUT I EXPECTED SOME EFFORT.

The sending off summed up our afternoon !

Biggest crowd of the season also how many will come back .

What will our coach say ? Where is the leadership on & off the pitch.

I'm sure the coach will say the right things and keep his job............

No effort at all and GT couldn't pick his nose playing a team like that and we have smallest pack on the pitch this season.
Kes could have gone for kicking in second half as well as Jamie.

First try .... we dropped the ball.
Second try ... three players took Moimoi up top, nobody went for his legs.
Umpteen forward passes later ...game over.
The ref was that embarrassed he even gave a couple.

That was everything bad about this current set-up in this league.

I will make the Leeds game my last ... I am finished with it.
I said I would if more of this money-club induction carried on, but didn't stick to it.

As for Donny harbouring thoughts of promotion ... get real!

Gonna walk away from this stinking game ....
While ever there is a placement club.

It got a lot worse after that S-O.

I await with anticipation what is said by coach , players etc

May need an extended I. T. D. this week .

They will just trot out how good Toronto were, how they are full time and how hard it is to play against that.
They won't mention how come a supposed promotion contender played like it didn't give a sh/t and were made to look like amateurs.

Never mind these are exciting times ... Toronto are here and they are the future.
Like I give a sh/t about Toronto.

Here's to GT ... you're doing a great job!

Im afraid I have to agree. The game of rugby league has been destroyed in this country...especially at the lower professional level. What I witnessed today was a complete farce. I was embarrassed for the game. Sport is about competition. Without at least a semblance of a level playing field then what is the point?

Some of the Dons players gave up at a fairly early stage. That is unforgivable for a professional sportsman...even in these ridiculous circumstances.

Rugby League used to mean everything to me. Playing and watching. It has become a joke...and a fairly boring game to watch. I find it all fairly heartbreaking to be honest. The game sold its soul to the devil when it took the Sky millions. It has been a downward spiral ever since. I remember people predicting this at the time and me thinking they were dinosaurs. Turns out they were right.

Some reaction from GT on the Official Site embarrassing etc

Some looking in mirrors is called for too.
How everyone including the fans respond when we go to York on Friday will be interesting .

I couldn't make the game today and relied on the clubs Twitter updates for which I am grateful, but even that appeared embarrassed by the way we were shipping try's.

Cant blame Toronto but you have to question how the RFL can think allowing a full time squad into Championship 1 is "good for the game".

I'm not a fan of the RFL but I think it would have been totally unfair to allow Toronto to start in the Championship. That would have annoyed me much more than having them in our league. If we can't match the investments of new clubs, then so be it, but we can't allow them to start in a higher league just because they've got a big cheque book. They have to prove they're capable through what they do on-field, and credit to Toronto, they're doing just that.

With regards to today's score, I expected us do keep to within 30 points. On paper the Toronto side were probably on a par with the best side in the Championship and this is the perspective in which we perhaps need to view the game. Nevertheless, it's certainly got to be a reality check on where we're actually at. We fell off tackles easily and we conceded some soft tries down the middle.

What has this told us about our promotion chances? Toronto look certainties for top spot. Let's hope they get it as we would have somewhere between no chance and zero chance should we face them in the play-offs!



Barrow look as though they're second best. There is then a pack of six teams who are probably going to finish quite close together - with each taking their turn at beating the others. Whether we're good enough to get in the top four when the league splits, only time will tell but we've got an important game at York on Good Friday.

York have won one and lost three. Oxford A: 35-28 Lost; N Wales H: 22-26 Lost; S Wales H: 26-24 Won; Barrow A: 28-0 Lost.

If we don't win that one, we could be in trouble.

With regards to today's team selection, I can't for the life of me think why GT selected an un-match-fit Jordie Hedges ahead of Brad England. I can only assume Brad England wasn't fit especially as Mason Tonks was likely to be feeling it after only playing part of last week's match after coming back from injury.

I'm not going to moan about the way this league is set up because we can't change it. The club and the players have got to knuckle down and try to bounce back from this game, proving this game was a blip, but there is increasing evidence building to suggest we might not have recruited strongly enough yet again.

Barrow should have gone up lat season (with Toulouse), the ref allowed the Rochdale tactics to win the day of the 'Final'. Barrow were the next bet team in C1 last season by a mile.

I keep on about it and I repeat - whoever is responsable for the squad selection is damaging the club by employing oldies and has-beens. The future is youth so why doe the club insist on these antiques ruining the future of a club with supposedly 'big ambitions' ??

Nothing will change until the general policy changes.

Forgetting the politics , the word embarrassing has been used a lot to describe our performance . I have defended the team in the past BUT not today .
We are supposed to be a tight nit group something did not seem right today .

Discipline also how can GT say we have not got a discipline problem we have an experienced player kicking a guy on the floor then marching up to the ref like its his( the ref) fault he(JT) kicked someone .

With regards the officials , they missed the forward passes because they could not keep up with the speed of Toronto game .

With regards should they shouldn't they be in C1 . There would have been complaints if they had been fast tracked .

I really do feel for the folk that went today, I boycotted the game in my own small way because of the ridiculous situation that the CH1 clubs face against all the odds given the Toronto set up. Lord only knows what folk in Canada think. The realism for us is that we will not beat Barrow at the KM, and we may struggle at home against Keighley. Fourth place is about all we can expect.

Last year we didn't have the strength upfront to compete with the likes of Barrow. I'm sure the aim this season was to stop that happening again. The recruitment of the oldies appears to be a one season attempt to get out of the league and then regroup for the following season in the higher league should we go up. I would imagine Makali Aizue and Jamie Thackray almost certainly won't be playing in 2018.

It's extremely hard for teams like the Dons to build a young side for the future because the better players are picked off by the sides in the higher league once they show potential, especially if you don't get promoted. It's also very hard for the young players to make the transition from Under 19s to playing against experienced men. We tried to recruit youngsters last year and we failed as the quality of the youngsters wasn't good enough but retention does become an issue if they are good enough. At the moment Keiran Cross is our best youngster but he'll be vulnerable to leaving us if we don't get promoted as a Championship side might make him an offer he can't refuse.

The class gap between League One and League Two is considerable but unless you've got a budget as big as Toronto's you can't recruit all that many genuine Championship quality players. The policy for most clubs is that they have to seriously rebuild when they get promoted.

That seems to be the nature of the game these days - deal with the present season first, try to get promoted, and then rebuild if you do go up.

You naughty boycotter!

Leave the pain to us regulars! Bah!



I think you're right though, we're not going to be favourites to beat Barrow at the Keepmoat based on what we know so far. The trouble is that finishing fourth would almost certainly mean a trip to Barrow should we get to the play-off final. So winning that one would be even less likely.

This season seems to be panning out in a similar way to last season: promotion appears to be an outside hope, rather than a realistic expectation.

Just to correct you if we come 4th we would play 3rd away , 2nd v 5th . Do not mean to be pedantic but I have had a bad experience this afternoon .
I am trying hard not to go over the top with my criticism of todays performance .

I know that they are a cherry picked team of full timers, but you only had to look at them to tell they were FIT.
Big and FIT.

We looked like a team of mates who had put down jumpers for goal posts and then started a kickabout.

We were found out today.

Toronto are just getting into their stride and no doubt will pan a few sides this season.

However that score is UNACCEPTABLE considering Siddal along with some mud nearly beat them in the cup.

A dark day ....
Which will be shrugged off no doubt.

You could tell that Toronto knew we are lazy down the middle at moving up.

Everyone should be given their money back after that performance paid by the players and GT.
makes you wish i didn't have a ticket for Leeds, coz if we hadn't got them Saturday would definitely not be going to support them
after that debacle.

if GT is still here at the end of this season i won't be watching anymore.

The bloke is absolute clueless! I read some other teams forums when we appointed him and they couldn't believe us taking him on, I'm not basing this on todays result as nobody will touch Toronto this season but he must have some dirt on hally cos his loyalty to him is as baffling as his team selections! It maybe proves saying the right things and brown nosing gets you far, WAKE UP CLUB DONCASTER WERE REGRESSING NOT PROGRESSING!!!