Doncaster Knights on a revenge mission at Nottingham as they seek to end unlucky sequence

Doncaster missed two late kicks from the touchline as their second-half comeback bid fell a point short.

It means they have now lost more games than they have won in the Championship - pending the outcome of an appeal against the Chinnor defeat in December - and must turn the tide quickly if they are to climb back into the promotion race.

That means no more hard luck stories, starting tonight at Nottingham, another long-standing Championship rival.

“It’s the start of the second half of the season this Friday so we’ve got to start putting all these lessons we’re learning into practice,” Ford told The Yorkshire Post.

“In terms of going away to a tough place last week and sticking in there and grinding your way back in, it was everything other than getting the result.

“We’ve had a few of those results now: Newcastle went to the last play, Sale did, sometimes in sport a bit of luck’s involved and we’re not quite getting it at the moment.

“We’ve gone to Pirates away, we were all over them and didn’t take the points for whatever reason, and next minute you’re 7-0 down at half-time and you’ve had all the ball, so it’s just stuff like that. At Coventry, we did, we were 12-points down and took two shots at goal to get to within six and ended up missing a conversion to win the game.

“So we are learning and these experiences are serving us well, but we’ve got to start putting it into practice now.”

A revenge mission to Nottingham tonight should add extra incentive for the Knights.

“Nottingham are going really well this year, certainly at home they’ve had some great results and also earlier in the season they came here and beat us fair and square,” said Ford.

“Certainly physically they caught us out a little bit.

“So we’ve got a lot of motivation, but with a short turnaround we’ve got to get the lads prepared to go in with the same mindset they went into Coventry with.”