By Leipziger
September 15 2012

Sometimes these headlines just write themselves.

It was never going to get any better from the first three games than 15 points but after London Scottish last week the Falcons last night had another wake-up call that they will not have everything their own way in the Championship.

We managed to finally get the bonus point but Dean Richards will no doubt have had the hairdryer out again as many of the 4,317 fans went home from KP disgruntled.

Still, we're not going to score 50 points every game and if we are going to have off-days, better we have them now and still win than lose a play-off.

The Falcons were dealt a blow just before kick-off when Andrew Higgins pulled out with injury, to be replaced by Tom Catterick, but the latter will have done his chances of a start next week no harm at all after being a threat on the wing all night.

Jimmy Gopperth moved to full-back to accommodate Waisea Luveniyali and Jonny Golding and Oliver Tomaszczyk were back in the front row. Rory Lawson made a first competitive start, as did Scott MacLeod.

Doncaster, with former Falcons man Tyson Lewis on the wing, looked to front up to us early on and showed that they were not going to roll over with some aggressive forwards play, but the Falcons took hold with a series of scrums in the away 22.

Penalty after penalty was given before finally Brian McGovern was sin-binned and from the next set referee Ian Tempest sent the home crowd threw his hand up into the whirlwind to signify a penalty try.

Gopperth added the easy conversion.

We continued to probe with the ball in hand for the most part, and though Jamie Lennard kicked a penalty for Doncaster on the break, Gopperth kicked over two of his own before half-time.

From one flowing move the Falcons spread left but with a three-on-one the last Knights defender was able to get a slight hand to the scoring pass and deflect it into touch.

The first half had not really been what we or no doubt the management were expecting but how many times in the past few years have we played badly in a league game but been 13-3 up at half-time?

We lost Will Welch at the break to what seems to be concussion, but Mark Wilson showed some good signs in his place.

From a powerful attack the crowd were disappointed when a penalty in front of the posts was kicked over by Gopperth instead of the Falcons going for a try, but “get the win and then worry about a bonus point” was probably the thinking. Makes sense I suppose.

On a night when the backs mostly looked under par but our forwards were fearsome in the set play, it was no surprise that it was after some powerful drives that Jonny Golding powered over for the second try.

Gopperth converted, and after Andy Brown was sin-binned for cynically blocking the ball while offside, Wilson stormed over the line for the third try with just minutes left.

With “We want a bonus point” ringing around the South Stand, and confusion over where the referee seemed to be finding so much injury time on, Gopperth showed the sort of scything run we've been looking for to cut through the defence and score the fourth try right on full-time.

The conversion completed the scoring and made the result 37-3, a satisfactory scoreline in anyone's book even if it does not tell the full story of how the hard Doncaster made us work.

We'll be top of the league going to Pirates now, and a win there will really set us up for the rest of the season having already defeated Bristol in the South West two weeks ago.

Maybe it wasn't perfect last night, but think back to the horror of the first game of last season at home to Bath. At that time, what would we have given for a 37-3 league win, against anyone, in any division, however achieved?

Some more opinion can be found here.