Doncaster Knights: Griffiths warns of potential London Scottish backlash

The Exiles slumped to a club-record defeat at Championship level when going down 72-12 at Ealing on Sunday and Knights director of rugby Clive Griffiths warns their players will be ‘desperate to redeem themselves’ this weekend.

“Fortunately we’ve faced this sort of situation many times and we know how to handle it,” he said.

“It will be the same scenario as when we played Rotherham after they had suffered a big defeat in their previous game, and that is to get on top early and try and put doubts in the minds of their players.

“It takes time to gell as a side when you’ve brought in a lot of new people, like they have, but they’ve got some good players.

“We’ll travel there in good spirits having won three out of four and it should have been four from four. If we can end our first month of the campaign with four wins it would represent a tremendous start to the season.”

Knights have held the upper-hand in most of their previous 10 games at Championship level, winning six and drawing one, but will face a more attack-focused Scottish side.

“Dave Morris was the coach at Loughborough for many years and we played them in Division One a couple of years ago and they also trained with us here at Castle Park so we know all about Dave’s philosophy and how he likes to play and you can see that how they are playing now,” said Griffiths.

Lacking the services of Canadian international back-rower Aaron Carpenter, concussed in the win over Nottingham last weekend, Griffiths drafts Academy prospect Sam Jones into his squad for the first time at Championship level.