Thornton frustrated by Donny collapse

Gary Thornton says he was bitterly disappointed by Doncaster’s second half performance against London Skolars on Sunday.

Thornton’s side led 22-4 at the break, but the Skolars fought back to secure a 28-28 draw and deny Donny the chance to move up to sixth in League 1.

“We weren’t good enough in the second half – we conceded a lot of penalties and we’ve got to be much better than that,” Thornton told the club’s official website.

“They got a lot of momentum, they ran hard in the middle of the field and were a big physical test for us, and they slowed the game down to their own pace.

“First half we did okay – we defended pretty well and took our chances in attack when they came along which was very pleasing, but we fell apart after half-time.

“We scored off four out of five sets in the first half which makes the final result even more disappointing, we wanted to kick on in the second half but that didn’t happen.

“London are a good side with some real physicality in there, they had a good spell and made the most of it so credit to them for that.

“We couldn’t stem the flow in the second half, we were doing a lot of defending and in the end it proved to be too much for us.”

Doncaster centre Brad England backed Thornton’s views on the game and admitted complacency may have set in during the second half.

“It’s really disappointing – we put a lot of effort into being ahead in that first half and that probably went against us after half-time,” said England.

“We spoke a lot in training about pushing on from the Leeds game and I think we did that in the opening forty, we worked really hard to get the lead but couldn’t hold on to it.

“We were a bit complacent in the opening parts of the second half, maybe thinking the game was done and London punished us for that.”