Doncaster RLFC: '˜Plenty of room for improvement' despite big win over Coventry

“Obviously anyone would want that sort of score in their first game of the season,” said Horne at the start of his first full campaign in charge.

“We scored some great tries and were generally very clinical and had a much better skill set. It was also pleasing to score 40 points in the second half without reply.

“Having said that we couldn’t have started any worse and against a better side we probably could have been behind at half-time.

“No disrespect to Coventry, we always knew that we were going to come out on top. But you still want to start a game well and we didn’t do that.

“We were losing out at too many rucks – an area we’d spent a lot of time working on in pre-season.

“We also forced the pass at times and also gave away a lot of penalties and that kept them in the game in the first 25 minutes or so and they probably grew in confidence from that.

“I thought it was a real scrappy game and there was no flow to it which didn’t help.

“I’m probably being a little hard on the players with it being the first game of the season but the boys themselves were also critical.

“Even though we led 30-10 at half time the atmosphere in the dressing room was as if we were behind on the scoreboard so credit to them that they understand the high expectations I have of them as a team.”

“Due to the weather and other limitations in pre-season you work hard on the wrestle and the contacts and I don’t think we executed that part of our game particularly well at times.

“Don’t get me wrong they had a few strong boys and they caused us some problems. But we are going to come across that throughout the season and if we don’t deal with it well we are going to find ourselves in a fair bit of trouble.”