The Sporting Hack

Chesterfield 5-2 Doncaster Rovers Grant McCann didn’t flinch.  His side are 3-1 behind in a local derby with less than an hour played.  The game is not drifting away from Doncaster, it’s galloping towards the sunset.  Hesitancy proved the visitors undoing with the first concession as keeper Ted Sharman-Lowe came out, retreated and slipped. Bim Pepple then doubled the advantage and the task at hand.  Rovers have not won a league game this season in which they’ve conceded the first goal.  Despite Luke Molyneux’s strike just before half time which had got them back in the game, it is the manager’s turn to throw caution to the wind, after Chesterfield’s third via the pint-sized Olakigbe. Reminiscent of the Guinness surfing advert of yesteryear ; “He waits...tick followed tock followed tick...”  There is no sense of animation, no panic, no troops being readied for action. Where are the calls for reinforcements or the change in approach? Where are the squad playe...

EFL SkyBet League 1 Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster (Att: 7,222) Tuesday 23 April 2019 Doncaster left the play-off door ajar after Accrington all but confirmed their safety by ending the hosts 13 game unbeaten home run. Grant McCann’s men have a three-point lead over Peterborough below them but have played a game more than his former employers at London Road. It was two moments of quality which put a hold on any post-season plans for the Yorkshiremen though. Sean McConville registered his eleventh goal of the campaign when he side footed home on the volley Paul Smyth’s inch perfect right wing cross from close range in emphatic fashion. The long-serving winger should have doubled his – and his team’s – tally less than fifteen minutes from the break when he created some space for himself inside the penalty area but inexplicably curled wide from 14 yards. Home skipper Tommy Rowe’s turn and shot – which was repelled at close quarters by visiting ‘keeper Jonathan M...

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 ...