Houles laments week off

Toulouse coach Sylvian Houles admits not playing last week was disappointing because they were on a good run of form towards the end of the regular season.

The French side have won their last 12 League 1 matches.

“Obviously we’ve had a weekend off and it wasn’t ideal because we’d only played two games before that and we like to keep the momentum going,” he said.

“We trained really well last week and worked on a few things. We know that Doncaster is going to be tough. When we played them over here, it was a really good contest.

“They are a good, structured team in terms of defence and offence and have some good individual players, so we have to be ready and concentrate on the job this weekend.

“We’re happy to go there because it’s a great ground and beautiful to play on. The boys will be happy to play there but we have to make sure we get the job done.”

Last week’s win against Hunslet Hawks was the response Doncaster coach Gary Thornton was looking for following a lacklustre performance against Barrow the week before.

“We were looking for a reaction and it certainly helped getting a couple of players back. We’ve been hit pretty hard with injuries this year but when we get those quality players back and people playing in the right positions, we’re not a bad team.

“We’re looking forward to the game against Toulouse. We put in a pretty good performance there, got ourselves right back into the game and at one point were within six points.

“They went up a gear in the last 20 but I felt the scoreline flattered them a little bit.

“We gave a really good account of ourselves in Toulouse and we’ve been really looking forward to this game for a while. We’re looking forward to challenging ourselves against the best team in the league.

“Hopefully we can put in a good performance in front of our own fans to back up last week against Hunslet.”