Reaction – Captain Ben Murphy reflects on Ampthill victory post game

23rd September 2024

Doncaster Knights began their Championship season with a 45-31 home win against Ampthill. Captain Ben Murphy spoke post game about how he felt the performance went:

“To get five points from the first game is always a positive. Obviously there’s parts of the game that we can improve on and there’s probably certain times where we lost control of the game. But like I said, five points from the first game is all you can ask for really.”

Murphy explained how despite being a very new squad, this did not effect their coherence on the pitch. “It’s probably one of the closest groups I’ve been in. We had a complete turnover, basically more than half the squad left. Everyone who’s come in, they’ve bought into the culture.

“And credit to the back room staff and the coaches that gave us the opportunity to bond, like the weekend in Bury which was very beneficial. Everyone seemed to gel. And from that moment forward we’ve become a team, really.”

The second row briefly looked ahead to the rest of the season: “Like anyone, you don’t play to come second. You always play to come first. So we’re taking it one game at a time. We’re not looking too far ahead, but we’d be lying if we weren’t looking for the top.

“It’s as realistic as you want to make it, I think. If you believe in it, then we can go on to do it. But like I said, we’re taking it one game at a time. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves.”

“Our back’s were very dangerous and our forwards have operated well with a couple of maul tries. We’ve got a few injured players coming back next week but other than that, we’ve not really looked too far ahead.” 

The Knights have been back on site training with their attention now on Saturday’s fixture against Nottingham. You can secure your tickets here!