Once they hit their stride, Doncaster Rovers played very well and took things into extra time but giving their opponents a generous headstart cost them.
The story of their League Two play-off semi-final against Crewe Alexandra followed the plot of their whole season. After his side’s 2-0 defeat and 4-3 penalty shoot-out loss, manager Grant McCann looked and sounded broken as he tried to comprehend what went wrong on the final night of a campaign whose last few months had gone so very right. 'I'll never get over it,' he said. 'I never got over the last one.
Inside 16 minutes, Rovers’ 2-0 lead had gone, Mickey Demetriou heading in at a corner and James Maxwell bundling a Chris Long cross past Thimothee Lo-Tutala. Had he not, Elliott Nevitt would have. It took 28 minutes for Doncaster to put on even a passable impression of the side which rose from 22nd in the table at the start of February to fifth at the end of April, Maxwell and Hakeeb Adelakun hunting the ball down and the latter picking out Joe Ironside for a deflected shot.
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