Doncaster Rovers 2 Gillingham 0

GILLINGHAM suffered a catalogue of trauma on Saturday as they crashed to another sorry away defeat at Doncaster.

Two dubious goals were enough to sink the Gills on a day that also saw loan striker Gary Mulligan taken to hospital with a badly damaged ankle.

Manager Ronnie Jepson was left in despair at the final whistle after already having to deal with a sickness bug that had spread through his team.

Jepson said: "It’s incredible what’s happening at the moment. Danny Spiller pulled out on Friday morning, he was really poorly.

"One or two others had the bug but they needed to come because we had nobody else to come into the squad. In an ideal world I might have left two or three at home but we knew the size of the squad.

"Mulligan’s had a bad knock. Simon Webster (physio) said he couldn’t feel his ankle."

Rovers sealed the match in the first half with two hotly-disputed goals. Keeper Jason Brown claimed the first hadn’t crossed the goal line while the second saw Rovers’ Jason Price fall easily in the box to win a penalty.

But Jepson added: “It’s no use feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve got to take it on the chin. It’s three points at the end of the day and that’s all it is.

"We’ve got another 12 games left where we need to get the remainder of the points needed to stay in this league and move on."

Jepson admitted his team were out-played on the day and Rovers were deserved winners despite the complaints.

He said: "Credit to the lads, they’ve had a go but I thought we were second best to a good Doncaster team. It was men against boys at times. The players could have easily gone under and been five or six goals behind but it wasn’t as they kept going.

"It wasn’t a good performance and I don’t want to make too many excuses. But the suspensions, injuries and illnesses at the minute are quite incredible but we’ve all got to stick together and hopefully we’ll get over that."