Rugby League

[Jemmo]

Dons game away at Oldham, which was originally scheduled for Friday at Boundary Park, but was then moved to Sunday at Sedgely Park. Has now been moved back to Friday at Boundary Park, with 2 days notice. The Championship really is in a mess at the moment, but I am particularly annoyed at both clubs for not even hinting the game might move again before coaches were booked and paid for, or train/other travel arrangements were made for the Sunday. The one thing the Dons seem to be consistently awful at is social media and online engagement, not sure if the Rovers have the same issues?

Also, we have some players unavailable for work commitments. The Dons have naively player right into Oldham's hands here and seem to be happy about it.

[Jemmo]

North Wales Crusaders have been taken over now and expect to play the remainder of the season, the Dons have been awarded a 48-0 victory for the game NWC failed to raise a team for. This puts us back 2nd in the table, above Fridays opponents Oldham on points difference

[tyke1962]

Dons game away at Oldham, which was originally scheduled for Friday at Boundary Park, but was then moved to Sunday at Sedgely Park. Has now been moved back to Friday at Boundary Park, with 2 days notice. The Championship really is in a mess at the moment, but I am particularly annoyed at both clubs for not even hinting the game might move again before coaches were booked and paid for, or train/other travel arrangements were made for the Sunday. The one thing the Dons seem to be consistently awful at is social media and online engagement, not sure if the Rovers have the same issues?

Also, we have some players unavailable for work commitments. The Dons have naively player right into Oldham's hands here and seem to be happy about it.

Whilst I understand the problems below Super League , it's difficult i know that , but the championship isn't helping itself either .

The Oldham club and Featherstone are prime examples , spending money they clearly couldn't sustain in order to buy the Super League status .

The Championship competition structure leaves much to be desired too .

This isn't going to land too well and I perfectly understand it won't for obvious reasons but for the game to survive there's a debate about feeder clubs to be had .

This is how it works in Australia with  competitions such as The Queensland Cup .

The feeder clubs to the Brisbane Broncos include Burleigh Bears , South Logan Magpies and Sunshine Coast Falcons who all compete in the Queensland Cup below the NRL .

This is repeated across Australia and particularly New South Wales and the Sydney NRL franchises .

It goes without saying that the Dons becoming a feeder club and only kept alive to develop players for the Castleford Tigers wouldn't be popular .

But unless a tv deal can be found and pretty sharpish too the championship is in very serious trouble and that puts Super League in trouble too .

We are vast approaching a serious conversation about this because there aren't too many alternatives .

[Jemmo]

I can see a good number of clubs being interested it. I'd be surprised if the Dons were one of them. There would be no point to them being part of Club Doncaster if they were (for example) Castleford's reserves. The general feeling I get when talking to Dons fans about it is, they wouldn't bother anymore. These are people who have had season tickets for decades.

On a personal note, if I wanted to watch shit second rate Castleford players, I'd be watching Castleford

[Jemmo]

Oldham 18 Dons 10

The advantages we handed them bit us in the arse. Too many players unavailable meant we had a make shift set of backs. So not bad effort considering.

[BobG]

bloody irritating though. Was there a gpod reason that meant we  had to play with half a team?

BobG

[Jemmo]

Not a good reason no...the game got moved at late (officially announced on Wednesday) and when you have part time players that means some have work commitments

[BobG]

Thanks Jemmo. Poor do all round I reckon. Why pick on Oldham v Dons for Friday night? Plenty of other matches available if somebody HAD to have a game on Friday. The whole thing devalues the game.

BobG

[Jemmo]

Sorry I should say; there was a good reason for Oldham. They had not been allowed to play at Boundary Park most of the season due to politics. That issue had been resolved so they wanted to move it back (the game was scheduled for Sedgeley Park outside old Oldham) and change the day.

[Jemmo]

Eco power looking good in the sun on the BBC today

[Jemmo]

Fun fact; before today the Eco Power Stadium was the only ground in British Rugby League that Willie Peters had coached games at but never won at. He won today in what would be his last chance before heading to PNG at the end of the season

[Jemmo]

Reports are saying that Championship Clubs have voted to implement a salary cap of £250k starting next season, in response to the number if clubs facing financial difficulties this year. There will however be a mechanism for clubs to spend over that if the club places the extra finances in a bond, so that if the club collapses that money is already there to pay the players etc. There will be a number if clubs already spending above that (way above that in some cases), most of which I assume will go do the bind route.

The amount is laughable to me though, and for a squad of 25 players equates to less than £200 a week on average (compared to the average of £1400 a week in SL)

[Jemmo]

Dons are away at London today (3:30). I am not anticipating the close affair of a few weeks ago. It;s a cup competition that people do not take seriously, which has been devauled even further this year. Add to that we have another game on Wednesday and I don't care what the scoreline is as long as we don't pick up any more injuries

[Jemmo]

As suspected, we've pretty much named the weakest 17 we could today

[Jemmo]

Finished 52-20.

Dons were out at half time then managed to get back within touching distance (32-20) with 20 to go and all the momentum. Couldnt convert the chance on the next set and London struck back. With the wind out the Dons sails it was just seeing out the game from then on.

Probably better than expected, at least in terms of being in the fight longer than expected.

Dons are now at home on Wednesday night against Barrow, the game is set to be live streamed here:

https://www.247.tv/live/rugbyleague/video/1215875-doncaster-rlfc-v-barrow-raiders-wednesday-20th-may-2026-7-30pm

[BillyStubbsTears]

Watched the video highlights this morning. Pretty much every London try had a blatant forward pass. Sometimes 2 or 3. Do they not enforce that any more?

[Jemmo]

Some teams seem to be very good at getting away with them, theyve learned to push the limit of them. We cynically call them a "super leage flat pass". Refs have gone weak on them

[roversdude]

What’s their coach moaning about did game kick off late

[Jemmo]

Yes. 4 Minutes late! FOUR! Ironically after they out the kick off back 30 minutes a couple of days before the game.

Each time we've played them he's found something really minor to have a rant about. I have not noticed him do this for other clubs so either everyone else is perfect or he doesn't like we're the only team likely to physically match them. If we'd been beating them it'd make more sense.

[Jemmo]

Barrow have been given a 30 point start by the bookies which seems ludicrously harsh on them to me considering we played 3 days ago and they played 10 days ago

If I ever bet on Dons games I would be backing barrow to beat that

[Jemmo]

Dons 12 Barrow 36

Don’t know how much that was down to playing on Sunday or how much was their tactics being bang on but we were awful today.

Now have 2 and a half weeks to the next game, and no home game til July 26th

[Jemmo]

After a two and a half week wait we finally get another fixture this weekend, just in time for a week gap until the next. It's riduculous.

But away at Salford this week and time for us to restart the season. Hopefully we've got some bodies back in who were sorely missed the last few games, and with us loaning Jordan Baldwinson and Pauli Pauli out to Hunslet it would suggest we do. We have also brought in Tom Whitehead from Hull KR, which has seen us as the BBC RL headlines story, which doesn't happen very often

[tyke1962]

I had a brief chat with London Broncos HC Jason Demetriou yesterday who was at Belle Vue as part of the tributes to John Kear who we sadly lost last weekend before our game against KR .

Jason as a player was a real Trinity legend who played under John for the Trin .

I just said " Super League next season Jason " , he just smiled and said " in the bag mate " .

It sort of confirmed my suspicions that I've had for quite a while , Jason was a high profile HC in the NRL and the fact he's gone over to Championship London Broncos tells me personally that the Broncos have had the wink for sometime about Super League next season irrespective of how this season's Championship campaign went .

As it happens they are currently walking the Championship so there isn't much you can say but it also means that someone is getting relegated from Super League and that looks to be Huddersfield who have issues both on and off the field , to say the least .

If my suspicions are correct and it's on the record that Super League is going to 16 clubs at some point and possibly next season then it's likely two more clubs could be going up to Super League along with the London Broncos .

Who those two potentially are is obviously open to debate but the Dons are definitely in that conversation in my opinion .

The top prize on the field may well evade the Dons this season but there's very much everything to play for as far as the bigger picture is concerned .

Where I feel the Dons need to be is in the marketing , I've seen the Broncos 3 times this season and with all due respect they are way off pulling any trees up in Super League but the marketing around them is making them a bigger deal than they actually are in reality .

The Dons need to make the case for Super League status because a one time opportunity in my opinion is coming up and this may be the last time we see it before Super League becomes a closed shop .

Cracking win for the Trin yesterday , that was some game and a fitting tribute to John Kear , he would have loved that contest yesterday.

[tommy toes]

Cracking game yesterday. Wakey 26 Hull KR 24.
Last gasp winning try and conversion.

[tyke1962]

Cracking game yesterday. Wakey 26 Hull KR 24.
Last gasp winning try and conversion.

Exciting times at Trinity these days and a world away from the constant years of struggle we've had since the club's Golden Era of the 60's .

In the 44 years I've gone along to Belle Vue I've seen us win two Championship Grand Finals , one Yorkshire Cup and a couple of promotions when we dropped out of the old first division in the 80's  , that's it and for a club with our history , heritage and size to say it's been thin gruel would be an understatement .

There's no getting away from the fact the Ellis family and their huge personal investment in to the club is massively helpful , even in Super League we rarely had the money to spend the salary cap , it didn't apply to us , how can you spend £2.1m on wages when you haven't got anything even close to that figure to spend .

Different ball game today , we are assembling a top high quality squad and I firmly believe we'll win the lot within the next 3 years .

The players we've recruited for next season are mind blowing to add to an already high quality squad .

Not easy coming from where we've resided for decades and trying to topple the usual serial winners but we are getting closer and closer , winning the first trophy will be the hardest and we may see some heartache to endure but we'll get there in my opinion.

[Jemmo]

Half time

Salford 12 - Dons 28

Dons were beating the clock after 20 minutes so slightly dissapointing to only be going in with a 16 point lead. Having said that, Salford are an awful lot better than the last two times we played them earlier in the season

[Metalmicky]

FT

Salford 16 - Dons 44

[Jemmo]

Full time

16-44

Big first and last 20 minutes from the dons. The bit in between we lost our way a bit.

Now we wait another 3 weeks for a game

[Jemmo]

Highlights of Salford game. It's not often we leave a game thinking the ref gave us everything...but the ref gave us everything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlJ1C-yNJ1w