Richie Wellens was pleased with the way his team applied themselves in the pre-season friendly against Newcastle United.
Rovers were beaten 3-2 but provided the Magpies with a stern test in front of almost 7,000 supporters at the Keepmoat Stadium.
He said: “I’m happy with everything I saw on the pitch, the result is the only thing I’m not pleased about because we want to create a winning mentality but we went toe-to-toe with them.
“I wanted to see where we were at with so many players isolating recently, they needed to improve their fitness levels and the game was good for them.
“We backed off them a bit early on but I thought we grew into the game and looked a lot better from the 25-minute mark up to half-time.”
After several players returned to the squad following a period of self-isolation, Wellens says consistent progress is the aim between now and the start of the new league campaign.
He added: “There are so many positives to take. We had two trialists starting and six of the others were self isolating and haven’t had much training in the build-up.
“Our game management needs to be better, we know that teams might counter on us so we need to be aware of when to break the game up when we’re a bit stretched.”
