Doncaster Knights can be sustainable in Premiership - De Mulder

Having reached the Championship play-off final for the first time in their history, Knights now face big-spending Bristol over two legs for a place in the Aviva Premiership.

And De Mulder has brushed aside worries that Doncaster would not be able to compete in the top tier were they to gain promotion.

“We had nearly 5,000 here in Sunday’s semi-final against Yorkshire Carnegie,” he said.

“The big question is could we get our average crowd up to the 10,000 mark if we got into the Premiership? If we could do that it would make it easily sustainable.

“Doncaster has a population of around 300,000 and if we could just capture a small percentage of that we’d be very pleased.

“Doncaster has always been a football town and I’ve never knocked that but we are hoping to keep the momentum going. I actually think we’d attract a lot of people if we were playing Premiership sides.”

Should they win promotion, Knights would temporarily move to the Keepmoat Stadium while Castle Park is brought up to standard.

The first leg of the play-off final takes place at Castle Park next Wednesday.