Cooke: ''We have issues to work on''

[Dons News]

Doncaster RLFC player coach Paul Cooke spoke to www.doncasterugbyleague.co.uk after his side’s final pre-season game against Leeds Rhinos.

Despite a spirited first half effort, the Dons surrendered an 8-6 advantage at the break, going down 42-14 to the Challenge Cup holders.

Cooke admitted his side still need to improve ahead of the Kingstone Press Championship opener against London Broncos on February 15^th.

He said: “We stuck in there, for forty minutes it was a contest and we were still well in the game.

“In the first 15 minutes of the second half we gifted the Leeds team possession and off the back of that they scored one or two and got in front.

 “They pinned us back and showed with a couple of quality players that they had in there, a great kicking game and effort in defence on how to strangle a team out of the game.

“What’s disappointing from our point of view is that we have conceded another forty points and we need to address those issues.

“First and foremost we are losing the ball on plays early in the tackle, it happened last week against Hunslet where we were 18-0 down before we knew it and secondly we need to defend better than we have been doing, with some of the plays and decisions defensively that we have been coming up with.

“We defended well in the first forty, we made a number of changes and we have seen enough of everybody to know what we are going to London with.

“The positives are that everybody has had the game time that they needed and everybody has put their hand up in one way or another.

“On top of that we have some answers that we needed from players that we needed to know about.

“We have issues to work on and we need to work on them urgently.  We are not a million miles away but we are not where we want to be and we have a fortnight to put things right."

To read Sunday's match report click here.

Remember you can be part of all the action in 2015.  To purchase your season ticket click here.

View the full article