REPORT: Doncaster 4–1 Bristol Rovers


EFL SkyBet League 1
Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster (Att: 6,907)
Tuesday 26 March 2019

Not quite at the stage of having to pull rabbits out of the hat to maintain their play-off push, Doncaster ensured they took maximum advantage of their ace up their sleeve - a game in hand – to return to the much sought after sixth spot.

Veteran magician James Coppinger helped himself to a couple of goals as the hosts cast a spell over Graham Coughlan’s bamboozled outfit. The Dubliner looked on forlornly while his opposite number, Belfast-born Grant McCann, marvelled at the performance of a man just nine months his junior.

Coppinger, the old hand, relaxed a slightly anxious crowd early on when, with less than three minutes gone, he turned 12 yards out and saw his left footed shot squirm meekly underneath the body of visiting ‘keeper Jack Bonham.

By the quarter hour mark, Coppinger had doubled his nights – and, in fact, his season’s – goal tally in far more emphatic fashion to put Doncaster firmly in control. Cutting in from the left, he fired home a low rasping drive with his wand of a right foot.

A captivated audience wanted more and Coppinger duly conjured an assist for Mallik Wilks to tuck home on the half hour. A perfectly weighted through ball put the livewire forward in the clear and he neatly dispatched his chance to complete the first half’s three card trick.

Wide man Kieran Sadlier could, and should have done better with a couple of chances ten minutes from the break, seeing one effort blocked and the other sail over before the visitors got a semblance of an opportunity.

There was still time in the half for stopper Marko Marosi to thwart Gavin Reilly, who’d been given the freedom of the Doncaster penalty area, before being called in to action to block Tom Lockyer at close quarters from a Jonson Clarke-Harris knockdown.

The Doncaster juggernaut rolled on unsympathetically shortly after the interval as Sadlier curled home a fourth with a little more than a minute of the second half gone. A through ball rebounded off John Marquis’ heel and kindly in to the path of the Irishman whose strike sealed a comprehensive double over the Bristolians.

Marquis couldn’t honour a Sadlier cross as he planted a header wide and was left to rue an offside flag. Consequently, the visitors, who were persistent if nothing else, kept Marosi honest. Winger Alex Jakubiak’s kept him on his toes and the ‘keeper had no chance when Clarke-Harris swept home from the spot after Matty Blair had upended James Clarke just after the hour mark. The Slovakian then pulled off a terrific reaction save to thwart a deflected header and subsequently snuff out any remaining west-country heart.


Teams:
Doncaster – Marosi; Blair, Downing, Butler, Andrew; Crawford, Rowe; Sadlier (Smith, 84), Coppinger (Beestin, 79), Wilks (May, 75), Marquis.
Bookings – Wilks

Bristol Rovers – Bonham; J. Clarke, Lockyer, Craig, Holmes-Dennis (Hartington, 72); Upson (Sinclair, 75), Agogo, O. Clarke, Jakubiak (Moore, 82), Reilly; Clarke-Harris
Bookings – Holmes-Dennis, Upson, J. Clarke

Man of the match – James Coppinger (Doncaster)

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