The firsts suffered another 3-2 defeat this time to Ben Rhydding despite having the majority of the chances. At home, the seconds battled hard but conceded six against a strong Sheffield Hallam side. Completing back to back wins, the thirds beat Scarborough 3-1. The fourths wrapped up the 3 points in style against Chesterfield as they scored 4. At the early push back slot, the fifths took part in tight encounter against Rotherham.

Results:
M1 2-3 Ben Rhydding
M2 1-6 Sheffield Hallam
M3 3-1 Scarborough
M4 4-1 Chesterfield
M5 2-2 Rotherham

M1: With the Christmas break on the horizon, the lads travelled to Ben Rhydding to close out the first half of the season, knowing that a win would put them in a decent position in the table, and a loss would have us looking over our shoulder.
2:30pm rolled round and the game pushed back, and immediately Doncaster were in the ascendancy, creating a number of chances from open play and winning several penalty corners. A theme of the last few games is that we haven’t converted our good moments in games into goals, and true to form after being on top, Doncaster went 1-0 down with Ben Rhydding’s first attempt on goal through a penalty corner.
Doncaster drew level just before half-time through a well taken penalty corner of their own, with Adam Bambrough (available to sponsor) getting his maiden National League goal. With the game in the balance, the second half went the same way as the first: Doncaster dominated the ball but switched off defensively when called upon. Two more penalty corner goals for the home side followed, and while Zain Davenport ( available to sponsor ) gave us hope with his second goal of the season, we fell just short of the mark and came away 3-2 down for the third week in succession.
Not the end to the first half of the season we wanted, but the table is extremely tight with 3 points separating 4th and 9th place. Ultimately, we’re not where we want to be or where I think we are capable of being in the league, and we have 9 cup finals left to try and finish as high as possible.
Home or away, win, lose or draw, the support we’ve received has been immense. I hope The Ultras rest up and are ready to hit the ground running next year.
Congratulations to Coach Cresswell and the Ladies 1XI on an unbeaten first half of the season as well – incredible work. I also must mention how the standard of his match previews have improved over the last few weeks. Maybe those English Language night classes are paying off…..either that or he’s hired a very talented ghost-writer, I’m not sure.
For those Doncaster players who still have games to play before the winter break, I wish you the best of luck. I hope everyone has a great Christmas and a friendly reminder that the world famous Cheese & Wine is on Saturday 17th December!

M2: This week for the Doncaster 2nd team there was a Yorkshire Derby against Sheffield Hallam. The boys in white showed clear improvements on last week in structure and connections between each other alongside maintaining communication through most of the game. Although top effort throughout, the first half came to an end and the mighty whites were down by 2 goals. However, with an encouraging team chat from the main man Neil Withington, the Donny lads were ready for putting another shift in to see this game out. A goal from Luke Hutson kept the boys going. Despite these efforts, the game ended with a 6-1 loss. Special mention goes to Tom Bradley who made some excellent saves through out and also Rahul Thomas who made his debut this week.

M3: After the 3s got back to winning ways last week, they had a tough task ahead of them playing a well drilled and physical Scarborough side.

In practically baltic conditions things could not of started better. With a cutting passage of play straight through the middle, and some tika-taka in the D, James Meek nudged one round the keeper to put the 3s ahead inside 5 minutes. A second followed shortly after with Tom Beverley confidently converting from top D with a well placed dragflick.
Not willing to roll over though Scarborough upped the tempo and applied pressure for the rest of the half and were rewarded with a backpost poachers goal to make sure the second half would be interesting.
The second half required cool heads, and the 3s retained possession and moved the ball around well limiting Scarborough to a handful of snatch and grab attacks which ultimately came to nothing. In the end the lack of ball, and territory for the home team resulted in a shot corner allowing Kye Stothard to drill low strike to the keepers right and secure all 3 points.

M4: The Mens 4s had a good mixture of youth and experience in the squad for their Away trip to Chesterfield to play Chesterfield 3rd XI.
Having narrowly missed out on a draw against Chesterfield 2nd XI with the last touch of the game earlier in the season the team wanted to better that result against the other Chesterfield side in the division.
Things did not start well with Chesterfield capitalising on a defensive faux pas as a quickly taken 16 went wrong.
Thankfully Doncaster were back on level terms 2 minutes later when A Fearn flicked a short corner in.
From that moment on, Doncaster grew and grew into the game and G Henshaw scored to put the visitors 2-1 up at half time.
The half time team talk emphasised the importance for Doncaster to score the next goal and not let the home side back into the game.
Early in the 2nd half another short corner was put out and Wheeldon got the final touch to give Doncaster some breathing space.
The game was end-to-end already but more gaps were appearing and Doncaster played some good passing hockey to create opportunities.
Fearn struck again firing the ball into the back of the net before the keeper could move.
Doncaster nearly scored a 5th with L Goodwin close to his first 4th XI goal denied cruelly by the Umpires whistle blowing for a short corner as the trigger was pulled.
The match finished 4-1 to Doncaster with all 16 making valuable contributions to a great result.

M5: The 5th team drew 2-2 with Rotherham in the early game.
Missing a few from the previous week and welcoming others back, the boys started brightly.
Hotchkiss tucked away the opener, and all seemed to be going to plan. Rotherham forced their way back into the match, but, crucially, Donny scored a 2nd, through Palmer.
The 2nd half saw Rotherham score 2 well-struck penalty corners, although Donny almost sneaked a winner but had one effort cleared off the line and another hitting the post meaning it finished all square.

Thank you to our sponsors: DC Training (Main club sponsor), Accelerate, Hawsons Accounting, AE spinks, MortgageLine, Home Farm & Lodge, Relish Bar and Grill, The Salutation, Smith Craven, Avalon Group.