Gillingham manager John Coleman felt there were signs of improvement in the team but defeat hurt.
Coleman was taking charge for the first time, two weeks after accepting the job of rebuilding Gillingham’s promotion charge, but Doncaster took the points with a 1-0 victory.
Report: Gillingham 0 Doncaster 1
The Gills boss said: “In any walk of life, there’s got to be an element that you can fail if you do anything, otherwise success means nothing. We failed because we failed to win, we lost.
“It wasn’t for the lack of trying. I thought we were fantastic for the first 25 minutes, so much so that I presume they feigned an injury to get a breather, to get more information on, because we were suffocating them.
“I’m not knocking their manager for that, or their player (Ted Sharman-Lowe), that happens. Unfortunately, we didn’t score in that period.
“I think that the big problem that we’ve got, historically and it’s plagued Gillingham for two years, is the lack of goals.
“We made a couple of good chances that we’d like to have taken. We presented them with a goal and they scored it.”
A header back towards his own goal by Armani Little was pounced upon by Luke Molyneux and he finished well, scoring the only goal of the game.
Coleman said: “The balance of the play changed a little bit. I thought we were too guilty of going backwards in the second half.
“Second half got very bitty, very stop start. We couldn’t really get a head of steam up.
“The work rate was there. That was evident to see.
“I hope the fans stay with us and they recognise the signs of recovery that I think are there.
“Nothing gets done in one day, or one game. There were plenty of games before.
“Whatever the scoreline was, I still think there’s room for improvement. I know there’s room for improvement and we’ll continue to work on that.
“I can see the style, the change in the ethos of the way I want us to play.
“It was very similar to successful sides I’ve had in the past. We’ve just got to get that mentality of scoring goals. It’s got to come more natural to us.
“I don’t think that is at the moment. That might be just you get a fluke goal and it all changes from there.
“I’m disappointed for the goal we conceded because it was an individual error and he lifted his hands up.
“People make mistakes like that. They say you should score when you’re on top. You’ve got to score when you’re on top.
“They score when they’re getting battered but we didn’t do enough. After the goal I think that old feeling of sorry for ourselves materialised.”
