The Dean Richards era at Doncaster Knights is up and running after a dogged second-half performance saw them shut out Hartpury to secure their first win of the Champ Rugby season.

Doncaster made a splash in the off-season by hiring the former Premiership and European Cup-winning coach as their new director of rugby. The experienced operator had warned against waving a magic wand, however, after coming in midway through pre-season to a team of players operating on part-time contracts.

The enormity of the task was then underlined when they suffered a second-half collapse in the face of the forward grunt of Cornish Pirates on the south coast on the opening weekend.

But they responded in composed fashion in front of 1,624 fans at Castle Park on Sunday, trading blows with plucky Hartpury in the first half and riding out their own indiscipline at the start of the second to score two tries and keep their West Country opponents scoreless.

Full focus: Alex Dolly gets ready to roll the ball into a scrum for Doncaster Knights in their Champ Rugby victory over Hartpury.

placeholder image — Full focus: Alex Dolly gets ready to roll the ball into a scrum for Doncaster Knights in their Champ Rugby victory over Hartpury.

“It’s nice to get your first win,” said Richards. “It looked like in the first 10 to 15 minutes we created three tries and only took one of them, so we could have had three or four more tries in that first half, so we’re getting there.

“They were avoidable penalties in that second half, decisions made by individuals which they’ll reflect upon and say I shouldn’t have done that, but we’ll work on that.

“After that I thought the boys showed a huge amount of ambition.

“More than anything I was pleased with our defence. We worked on it this week after being disappointed with it last week.

Alex Dolly conducts an attack for Doncaster Knights against Hartpury.

“But there’s still improvement to find. We took last week on the chin and you learn from it, we changed our focus slightly and improved this week.”

Opening-home-game optimism hung in the air among the punters beforehand, intrigued to see what influence Richards had been able to have in his short time with the club.

And the early signs were encouraging as Knights tore into the lead within 90 seconds, quick hands releasing the barrelling full-back Telusa Veainu who cut in under the posts from 22 metres out.

Back-row forward Bailey Ransom could have had a second score but was cut down, but within the blink of an eye old habits had come back to haunt Doncaster, as first winger Jack Cotgreave raced onto a hopeful kick and made the most of a favourable bounce to cross, and then after sustained Hartpury pressure, Harry Short punched a hole in the rearguard.

Back came Doncaster, winning a penalty on halfway that they kicked to touch, putting the attack in the hands of the forwards and they didn’t disappoint, mauling over the line with hooker James Isaacs the man with ball in hand.

Alex Dolly converted both of Doncaster’s tries and they would have had a two-point lead going into the break were it not for a late Bazalgette penalty nudging Hartpury into 15-14 advantage.

Doncaster needed to be smart on the resumption, mindful of their second-half collapse a week earlier at Pirates, but indiscipline kept holding them back, three penalties conceded in the first 10 minutes fortunately for them going unpunished.

It was Dolly who kicked the first points of the second 40 on 56 minutes, a penalty in front of the posts restoring Doncaster’s two-point advantage.

Semesa Rokoduguni then bulldozed his way down the right wing in front of the rising umbrellas on the terraces as the rain started to fall and flicked a smart pass out to Zach Kerr on his shoulder. The Northern Irishman crashed over, Dolly’s touchline conversion giving the Knights a two-score lead with 17 minutes to play.

Fiji centre Penaia Tagutu squandered a golden opportunity to score a fourth try after a good break by Veainu, but he made amends shortly after when Doncaster camped on the Hartpury line on the right before switching the play to the left for Tagutu to get it right at the second attempt.

In any game in the second tier in the last 26 years, that fourth try would have secured Doncaster a bonus point, but the Champ operates under the “three more tries” rule now. At that stage, Doncaster led by four tries to two, needing to score one more to take them three clear and claim the bonus. That they were unable to do so was a minor downside to an otherwise encouraging last quarter display, capped by a determined defensive effort of their own to deny Hartpury a third try which would have earned them a losing bonus point.