The Sporting Hack

Silver service: Dons' Tony Miller Sheffield steel: a delighted Mark Aston Sheffield Eagles and Doncaster provided a major poke in the eye to the Rugby Football League with their respective play-off grand final victories in Warrington on Sunday. On the Co-Operative Championship’s day in the sun, the South Yorkshire pair provided a stark reminder of their prowess to the game’s governing body when Mark Aston and Tony Miller’s sides won 20-16 and 16-13 respectively against the highly fancied pair of Featherstone Rovers and Barrow Raiders.  While the suits at Red Hall insist on expanding the game beyond the heartland in to far flung places such as Gloucester and Oxford (both of whom will compete in the third tier next season), it has yet to make any further developments of the interest shown in this large and relatively untouched pocket of Yorkshire. The souvenir matchday magazine from Sunday – which highlighted the impending World Cup, to be...

Doncaster: Champions at last.   Doncaster RLFC 16 v 13 Barrow Raiders Co-Operative Championship 1 Grand Final Halliwell Jones Stadium, Warrington Doncaster registered their second grand final win in five years, but did so for the first ever time as League Leaders - rubber stamping their name in the history books as Champions after withstanding a late scare at Warrington’s Halliwell Jones Stadium. Just weeks after finishing the regular season in 1 st place, the Rugby Football League had dramatically denied the south Yorkshire side the title of Champions. Tony Miller’s men emphatically avenged that call from the governing body as well as the narrow defeat inflicted by the same opponents at the Keepmoat Stadium a fortnight ago in a semi-final qualifier. A try from Man of the Match Craig Fawcett proved to be decisive in the driving rain as he crossed on the hour to edge out the Cumbrian side in an nervy, yet entertaining, finale to the season. Without the ...