Injured half-back Jamie Lennard shared the disappointment of the Castle Park faithful as Doncaster Knights suffered an eighth successive Championship defeat against fellow strugglers Jersey.
One of the stars of last season’s National League One promotion-winning side, Lennard has been on the sidelines with a knee injury since the spirited defeat away to leaders Bristol back in November.
However, even though league results in recent months have not been what had been expected, Lennard says he has not detected any defeatist attitudes within the squad.
“There is no lack of effort and everyone wants to win,” he said.
“When you are on the sort of losing streak that we are currently on in the league, everyone tightens up a little bit and we want to play with width so badly that there is a tendency to over play it and try too hard.
“When you do that mistakes can creep into your game and they become very costly when you need a win so we probably need to play a bit tighter at times.”
Like his team-mates, Lennard had hoped the visit of Jersey, who had lost their previous eight games, would provide the springboard to bounce back up the table.
“We had quite a bit of joy against them at their place earlier in the season so we felt confident.
“But, as I say, we’ve struggled to pick up a win recently and that can play on your mind.
“Certainly from the sidelines I thought that we could do a job on them but unfortunately they were really strong at the set-pieces and we also made a couple of errors which gave them a leg-up in the first half.
“We always back ourselves in the second half to put something on but fair play to Jersey, they defended and kicked well.
“I’m still confident that we can stay up. It certainly doesn’t feel like two years ago. We’ve got a lot more players and smarter players.
“As soon as we get a win I think that will be the turning point.”