Humiliated Knights to hold inquest into Bristol hammering

Doncaster Knights were humiliated 65-3 by favourites Bristol who put in a ruthless performance on Friday night as they emphatically underlined their status as promotion favourites.

Ironically, the Knights actually led 3-0 and had the chance to go further ahead before the onslaught began.

But it was the overall performance from an admittedly weakened side that left first-year head coach Davey scratching his head.

“It’s the question of why that performance was so poor that is the burning issue,” said the Welshman.

“It’s not that long ago that we were beating teams like Cornish Pirates and Bedford at home.

“Questions need to be asked of the players. They have got to accept that and look at it from that point of view.

“It was a very embarrassing result and it has been a long weekend trying to take it in.

“But take nothing away from Bristol, they were really good.

“It’s a tough group but we have to look at ourselves and can’t hide behind that.

“We have to come back together now this week, starting with a chat on what went wrong and how it went wrong.

“We’ll look at that tomorrow.

“We’ve got five games left, anymore performances like that and we’ll be out of the play-offs.”

Doncaster’s task as lowest seeds in the promotion play-offs was made even harder when they lost influential play-makers David McIlwaine and Tom Luke during a regular season conclusion that required them to play four games in nine days.

That enraged Davey, who added: “The injuries raised their head again on Friday night. We lost some more key players in the first half which didn’t help but I can’t use that as an excuse.

“We’ve been up against it with injuries for a while and identified that as a reason why we didn’t get higher than eighth in the league, which after what we’ve been through, I still regard as a creditable finish.

“We were behind the eight-ball pretty much the entire game.

“After going 3-0 up we had the opportunity to move the ball which has been something we have done all season, but we opted not to.

“The long and short of it is we were very, very poor.”