Laycock’s verdict after Doncaster clash
The pre-season victory saw two tries from Adam Radwan and further scores from Logovi’i Mulipola, Jamie Blamire and Connor Collett, but a strong finish from the visitors cut the difference down to just four points.
Laycock said: “Everyone who is fit has now had a run-out inside the past 24 hours against either Glasgow or Doncaster – or both – which is brilliant for us, and is good preparation for the season ahead.
“We’ve had a lot of young lads playing and it’s obviously a very nervous time for them coming in to make their first team debuts, but I thought they did well and they’ll be much better for the experience.
“The boys are frustrated at how the final score panned out with conceding those two late tries, though, because we were in control for large parts of the game.
“Doncaster came back into it near the end, credit to them, and we had a young pack out there at the end with an average age of about 20.
“It’s good that the lads are thinking about the game that way in terms of how they can improve, because we were leading by a lot more and had enjoyed a lot of good work in the set-piece.”
Laycock added: “Doncaster provided a good stern test, which is exactly what you want in these games.
“From an attacking side of things we’ve put a lot of work into our kicking game and how we can win the ball back from our kicks, which I thought we managed well on a lot of occasions.
“When we do get the chance to move the ball to the space, that’s when we’re at our best, and we’ve just got to try and find more ways to do that.”
Moving into their final pre-season hit-out against Edinburgh on Saturday before the Gallagher Premiership season starts at home to Harlequins on Sunday September 19, Laycock said: “The main thing is that we keep working on the things we’ve been working on.
“Today was a good benchmark for where we’re at as a squad, and there are certain areas where we need to tidy up our work going into that Edinburgh game next weekend.”
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