Professional development phase coach Frank Sinclair felt his side gave their all despite falling to defeat against Bradford City in the EFL Youth Alliance League.
The youth team took on their fourth game in 10 days when they travelled to the Horsfall Community Stadium but tired legs told and a clinical Bantams side took advantage.
Although Rovers’ unbeaten league run in 2023 came to an end in West Yorkshire, Sinclair insisted his team gave all their efforts to try and extend that streak.
He said: “It was a difficult morning really, Bradford obviously showed us a lot respect by playing a very strong team and we only had the 13 outfield players available to us so it was difficult to rotate them.
“I try to do that as much as possible but with the heavy load of games that we’ve had over the last few weeks, I think it caught up with us in terms of our energy levels.
“We weren’t in a position to match them and we ended up paying the price for it, but I can’t fault our lads.
“They’ve given me 100% in terms of effort, worked their absolute socks off and there was some tremendous application from players despite the result.
“I knew that the low numbers we had available would catch up with us because we couldn’t get the help that we’d like from the U16 players for the midweek games.
“It was really difficult for us and Bradford punished us in the end but I can’t fault how our lads tried to play, especially in the second half.”
The youth team have another trip on the road as they travel to Grimsby Town on Saturday March 11, and Sinclair felt his team have to quickly move on from their disappointed to return to winning ways.
He said: “We’re trying to develop footballers who are going to go on and play for the first team so we’ll go again now, try and recover in the best way that we can and give our all to get a result at the weekend.
“We’ve got to go back to what we’ve already done this season and carry on doing it right until the end.
“The lads have been in a rich vein of form over the last six weeks, so we’ll try and go back to that because we all want to succeed.
“We’ll carry on playing with the style that we believe is the correct one for us and hopefully we’ll get back to the high levels that we’ve been at during this season.
“It is disappointing having days like we’ve had against Bradford and suffering a heavy score line, but it wasn’t the team that turned up at Scunthorpe earlier on in the season that weren’t ready to roll their sleeves up and work hard."