Doncaster RLFC News

Doncaster Rugby League Football Club (Doncaster RLFC) are a professional rugby league club based in the South Yorkshire city of Doncaster, where they have forged a place for themselves as one of the county’s leading rugby sides.

Although the club are located just south of the sports heartlands, they are a relatively young club having been established in 1995, although their history does go back further than that to 1951.

Despite all of that, it can be a frustrating experience for fans to find all the latest news regarding Doncaster rugby league club.

Doncaster RLFC Breaking News

Thankfully, there is now a way to for fans to keep up to date and that is by using the service found on this page.

We bring you all the latest breaking news stories regarding the Dons from news outlets around the world.

Doncaster RLFC Latest News Today

If a news story has broken about the club today, we will bring you all of the headlines as and when they happen.

Stadium

The sport has had 3 homes in the city down the years, with the original club playing firstly at the York Road Greyhound Stadium, then they moved to the famous Tattersfield Stadium that would be there home for over 40 years.

In the mid 1990’s, the club moved to the cities football clubs home ground of Bellevue and after a brief stay at Meadow Court Stadium, they would paly out of Bellevue for the best part of a decade.

In 2007, both the cities football and rugby clubs moved to the brand new Lakeside Stadium (Keepmoat Stadium, Eco-Power Stadium) that has been there home ground ever since.

The stadium is one of the best in the sport and features a modern all-seater bowl design that can host a little over 15,000 fans.

Location

The club are located in the South Yorkshire city of Doncaster, which is just down the A1 from the sports heartlands and close to the city of Sheffield, so it is no surprise that the club’s biggest rivals are the Sheffield Eagles.

About

Donny, as the club are affectionately known as, have had a few names down the years including the Doncaster Dragons (1995-2005), the Doncaster Lakers (2006-07) but now they have gone back to their originally name of simply Doncaster RLFC, although they still have the nickname of the ‘The Dons’.

The club have an easy to recognise blue and gold (yellow) playing strip.

History

The club’s history can be traced back to 1951 when they were first formed but the early years were a constant struggled for Donny, something that was highlighted during the 1056-61 seasons when they finished bottom of the table every single season.

Things did start to slowly improve but for much of the rest of the 60’s, they remained a bottom 3 club, which h was something that would continue for much of the 1970’s and early 80’s.

In fact, the club would only finish outside of the bottom 3 on 2 occasions in that period, but that poor run of form did gain them some notoriety including featuring in a one-off documentary called Another Bloody Sunday when a tv crew followed the club during the 1980 season.

The mid to late 1980’s saw a huge improvement in the club’s fortunes when John Sheridan put together a winning side for the first time.

The 1990’s got off to a great start when they defeated Nottingham City in 1991 by a record score of 88 points to 6.
The early 90’s would continue to see success for the club as they would gain promotion to the top tier for the first time in the 1993-94 season.

Unfortunately, this period of success would also see the club take on huge debts and in late 1994, they were placed in administration.

After an attempted ‘merger’ with the Sheffield Eagles fell through, the RFL took over the running of the club before they were bought by the owner of their Tattersfield home ground.

That proved to be only a short reprieve and after there first topflight season, the club were liquidated and the Tattersfield ground was sold to a housing developer.

Just a year later, a new club would emerge in the then town of Doncaster under the name of the Doncaster Dragons, but they would have to drop down the divisions and start life in the bottom tier.

With there former home ground now gone, they would move in with the football club and then to a greyhound stadium before heading back to Belle Vue in 1998.

The following season would see St John Ellis appointed as head coach and that would lead to some more success for the club as they started to make there home ground a fortress.

In 2007, the club moved to their current home ground, originally known as the Lakeside Community Stadium, and if reference to their new location, the club changed their name to the Doncaster Lakers in 2005.

The club’s traditional colours of blue and gold were changed to red, white and black and to the shock of nobody, the clubs fans were far from impressed.

Ellery Hanley took over in time for the move and by the time of their first match at their new home, the club’s colours had reverted to blue and gold and over 5,000 fans saw them lose to arch-rivals Sheffield.

Later in that year, the club were picked for live tv for the first time in over a decade but despite a bumper crowd of around 6,500, they would lose heavily to the full-time Castleford Tigers.

Unfortunately, that would prove to be somewhat of a false dawn as the club would soon announced that they were to go into a CVA (Company Voluntary Agreement) and there chairman resigned.

Several players then left the club, as did head coach Gary Wilkinson, and the club would soon lose to Widnes by a massive 90 points to 4 at home.

It was announced that the club would head into liquidation by the middle of June with no funds and on the last day before that happened, 2 local businessmen took over the club, but the club were demote to the bottom division.

The club would return to their original Doncaster RLFC name but with finances still an issue, it was a huge shock to see them gain promotion to the 2nd tier in 2008.

That didn’t last long however despite a takeover by former player Carl Hall but they did pull off a huge coup in 2012 when Paul Cooke dropped down to the third tier to play for the club.

In 2013, the club were bought by the cities football club to become a ‘Club Doncaster’ outfit and that helped the club to establish themselves as a 2nd tier side for some time.

Unfortunately, they would drop down the third tier once again but in 2022, they made it to the paly-off final but missed out on promotion to Swinton.

Doncaster RL News Headlines

If you are looking for the latest Doncaster rugby league news headlines, you are in the right place as we bring you all the new headlines from outlets around the world.

Doncaster Rugby League News Update

As is the case with most media nowadays, the focus is on been the first to publish and not on been the most accurate.

That leads to most stories been updated after they have been published and that can be a frustrating experience for fans of Donny RL but that no longer needs to be the case, as we bring you all of the updates to headlines and when they happen.