Poor away record gives Doncaster Knights the spooks

The Castle Park club slumped to their fourth away defeat in five league and cup games when going down 14-10 against London Welsh, who face a winding-up order today, at Old Deer Park.

“Obviously our away form has been disappointing this season but we did enough to win two games of rugby in the second half,” said director of rugby Clive Griffiths.

“At least we picked up a losing bonus point which we didn’t in our previous two away league defeats.

“The result was a combination of another poor start, poor decisions and players who were playing out of their skin last year having modest campaigns so far.

“And just when you don’t need it we had several horrendous calls against us, particularly at the end.

“I’ve spoken before this season about teams defending our rolling maul by collapsing it and there were two at the end right on their line that they got away with despite having had a warning.

“I’m sorry for the boys that they didn’t have more to show for their second half efforts and scoring two tries against one.

“The only try they scored was when someone shot out of the line and they capitalised – though there was a missed tackle and their wing should still have been nailed.

“But apart from that our defence kept us in it and they only really threatened once in the second half.

“We’ve got have the second best defence in the league after (leaders) London Irish and they’ll always have a good defensive record because of how they play.”