The Dons have been drawn away at Bradford Bulls in the second round of the Challenge Cup. Game to be played on the weekend of 25 / 26 January 2025.

The winners will have a home fixture against Castleford Tigers on the weekend of 8 / 9 February 2025.

Good effort by your team yesterday. Awful conditions. Hope the lad that went off with the HIA is ok.

Considering the players missing (how we have an injury crisis before the season started is another debate) yesterday wasn't too bad. The efoort levels and fitness were there, just couldn't get enough try scoring chances without the foundation we'd get from a full pack. Having to play Tali at prop shows the situation we're in at the moment

The size of the squad is criminal, we got away with it last season but gambling again is bonkers, the effort was there yesterday and conditions were terrible but we seriously lack pace and creativity, i was hugely disappointed in our recruitment pre-season and I've seen nothing to suggest otherwise (it was debated at the game whether we are actually worse than last season). I always tend to be more critical than positive because progression is key, i genuinely believe craig hall's contract stipulates he has to play a high percentage of games because i honestly can't see what he brings to the team??? Also Connor Robinson is looking like a luxury nowadays even his kicking is bang average! Still want Horne out and hull fc DR to do one with him. Rant over COYD

Our forwards (when we see them all) are much better than last season, in my opinion. Particularly when it comes to the depth of those fighting for spots.

Our backs are probably no better, but the depth of the backs for me is worse. I am really surprised we haven't brought in at least 1 or 2 more backs. I guess we still might, and there are still players available (Liam Kay, Liam Tindall etc), but I don't have any info supporting that

I expect this is the reason that recruitment at Doncaster isn't pushing the boat out:

The Don's are a classic old boys set up where alot of middle aged men involved in the club are using the club as a cash cow, last seasons recruitment gave me hope that finally we were gonna go for it and be an ambitious club but as stated previously the signings this time around are very underwhelming, i know the majority of fans will ignore the figures shown above and instead blindly follow everything the club tells us but for a club supposedly doing fantastically well off the pitch it's quite alarming if those figures are true, i genuinely believe we had a great opportunity to build on the signings from last year and the position we finished but have not gone through with ambition, I'll gladly hold my hands up at the end of the season if proven wrong COYD.

We can’t sign a whole new squad every season. We had to last year following the promotion, but we still have those players. They don’t need signing again.

The players we’ve bought in are generally better than the players who have left ie Jones is a lot better than Ferres, Bowden is better than Holdstock etc (although I think Guzdek should have stayed and hasn’t been adequately lreplaced)

When you compare bradfords signings (who in my opinion wasn't a million miles away from us last season) to ours then you can see the ambition, we had the chance to make statement signings following on from last season but bowden at 33, misky who looks a B-Tec version of burns and Boas along with Jones and gebbie who are meh signings are not really players to get the fans off their seats, we lack pace and creativity and that was evident at bradford last week. Having craig hall on the field is a car crash waiting to happen