Featherstone Rovers' response delights head coach James Ford

​Ford needed the team to respond after back to back home defeats against Wakefield Trinity and Bradford Bulls had led to doubts creeping in about how well Rovers would be able to compete in the Betfred Championship this year.

But the players looked motivated to right some wrongs from the kick-off and overcame the early sin-binning of dual registration addition Ben Reynolds to blow their hosts away.

Significantly Fev were impressive in both halves, in attack and defence and turned in their most complete performance of the season to look to be back on track.

“I thought it was a real positive response, a massive step in the right direction” said Rovers boss Ford.

"I feel this season we’ve served up games with plenty of positive signs. There’s been one or two games where we’ve faltered a little bit, one of those was last week.

"There was a little bit or pressure around us to come and perform and over the course of the 80 minutes I felt we did.

"We beat a very good team in Donny, they’ve got some great players, some of who had a real point to prove against us. So I am delighted to take the points.”

Ford and Featherstone now turn their attentions to another big game this Sunday when they take on a Widnes Vikings side that has started the season positively.

Rovers are back at home and will not want to lose there for a third successive time, but face opponents high on confidence following a 40-14 beating of Halifax Panthers that took their record to four wins from four Championship matches.

Featherstone were boosted for their trip to Doncaster with the addition of players on dual registration from Hull KR, notably half-back Ben Reynolds who started the campaign with Fev, and will be hoping for similar help this week with a number of first teamers still likely to be absent.

They did have several players back from injury and suspension, including Jack Bussey who returned after a month out.

On his return he said: “It was very tiring and it showed at times.

"You can train all you want, but you can’t replicate match fitness and I felt it a few times, it was quite warm.

“It was a tough game, I don’t think the score reflected how tough the game was in patches.

"It will be good to just dust off a few cobwebs for myself and we showed that we are a great team. We bounced back from last week and we’ll kick on now for the rest of the year.

"In the second half we really put them to the sword and to only concede one try against a team like Doncaster is pretty good going.

"We’ve won two and lost two in the league, but there’s plenty of games to be played and we need to just keep knocking games off.”