Doncaster Knights v Ealing: Knights looking to reward Castle Park faithful

Knights saw their director of rugby Steve Boden leave suddenly in January to be replaced by his head coach Ford and Sir Ian McGeechan on a consultancy basis.

Results have been up and down all season, with a late 32-29 defeat at Bedford last time out limiting their chances of claiming a top-four finish in the Championship.

But they can still secure a fourth successive top-six finish over the course of the final two games, one which will see them bid farewell to a number of long-serving players.

Ford said: “Our support has been brilliant all year, we want to give them a performance to say thank you.

"A lot of lads are moving on from the team who have been a part of the club for many years so it’s going to be an emotional day, our last home game.

"We’ve just got to, as a group, send them off in the correct way and use that emotional energy to get the best out of us.

"Ealing have been the best team all year so it will be good to see where we’re at.”

They go into this stiffest of second-tier tests looking for a response to the defeat at Bedford, when the Blues capitalised on Doncaster’s indiscipline to sneak over the line.

“That was really tough,” said Ford. “I thought the lads put a lot into that performance but fair play to Bedford, with us having a red card and a yellow card in that last 20 minutes, they executed really well.

"It ’s tough because we had a good lead and should have seen it off. As frustrating as it is you can still learn a lot from those kind of games.”