Jamie Crawford
28 March, 2025
Sport

London Scottish v Doncaster Knights

The Scottish exiles are the only team to have nilled the Knights this season; to add insult to injury their 0-12 win last October was at Castle Park, the challenge is on to beat them at their Richmond Athletic Ground (RAG) home.

Joe Ford, Doncaster Knights DoR

The DRFC website dubbed the win over Ealing Trailfinders as producing a huge result at home as they defeated Ealing Trailfinders for the second time this season. Can we back that up with another great performance against London Scottish?

The Scottish exiles lost in Cornwall to the Prates 41-31 and so will want to rebound with a win. Their consolation was that they scored a try bonus point.Their coaches Bryan Redpath and Joe Gray were disappointed with some of the inaccuracies in the game and noted that their charges looked like a side with a bit of rust in/on them coming off the back of a four week break. That ‘rust’ will have sanded off in Cornwall and the Scottish will be rust-free on Saturday.

Doncaster Knights
Doncaster Knights Credit: Doncaster Rugby Club

The Knights want the Trailfinders win to start a great end to the season, which team wants it more, is the Scottish wanting to do the double over the Knights stronger than the Knights wanting to avenge the home defeat? Doncaster Knights Director of Rugby (DoR) Joe Ford (pictured) will obviously want the former.

Before last weekend’s results, each team had similar offense and defence with Scottish scoring seven more points the Knights and conceding 55 more. Of these points, Scottish had scored two more tries but conceded five more than the Knights.No Scottish player appears in the top 15 try-scorers but they’ve scored more tries than the Knights, this indicates that try-scoring is spread amongst many players and between forwards and backs.The Knights must be wary of an attack coming from anywhere not just say from one or two prolific try-scoring, flying wingers!

The Knights are two league points above Scottish with one more win, so Scottish must win to rise above the Knights, a draw wouldn’t be sufficient.

Saturday March 29, Richmond Athletic Ground, KO 3pm.

Other games taking place across our green and pleasant land.

All Saturday March 29.

Bedford Blues (2) v Cornish Pirates (6)

Caldy (11) v Ampthill (9)

Cambridge (12) v Hartpury University (4)

Chinnor (10) v Coventry (3)

Ealing Trailfinders (1) v Nottingham (5)

London Scottish (8) v Doncaster Knights (7)

A Knight Win would see us remain seventh because sixth-placed Cornish Pirates are six points above us.

A Knight Loss would see us drop a place to eighth immediately, ninth if Ampthill beat Caldy and possibly tenth is Chinnor beat Coventry with a bonus point. The possible tenth would be prevented if we scored a losing bonus point by finishing within seven points of Scottish.