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The Blues are ready to welcome Rovers to Cumbria on Saturday tomorrow for their opening fixture of the new League One campaign, and just hold the advantage on previous meetings between the two teams. Of the 28 games played, United have recorded 12 wins, although Doncaster have come away with a healthy eight victories. Goals have been tremendously hard to come by in the last six encounters between Carlisle and Rovers though, with only a paltry five goals scored in 540 minutes of football played.
The last three seasons the two sides have played each other one of the teams have been promoted at the end of the campaign, with Carlisle also being relegated in Doncaster's title-winning 2003-04 season. The previous match played between the two at Brunton Park was nearly three years, in November 2003, with Doncaster inflicting a narrow 0-1 defeat on the Cumbrians in a Division Three match. Leo Fortune-West scoring the only goal of the game in the 68th minute for Rovers as the Blues slumped to their eleventh straight league defeat under then boss Paul Simpson. The match was watched by only 4,344 spectators, and that promises to be a far cry from the 10,000 crowd that is expected to head down Warwick Road for the 3pm kick-off tomorrow.
For a detailed analysis of the head-to-head between the two sides, click here
| Recent encounters between the teams: | |||||
| 2003/2004 | Sat 08 May | Doncaster | 1 - 0 | Carlisle | LGE2 |
| 2003/2004 | Sat 29 Nov | Carlisle | 0 - 1 | Doncaster | LGE2 |
| 1996/1997 | Sat 29 Mar | Carlisle | 0 - 0 | Doncaster | LGE2 |
| 1996/1997 | Sat 17 Aug | Doncaster | 0 - 1 | Carlisle | LGE2 |
| 1994/1995 | Sat 04 Feb | Doncaster | 0 - 0 | Carlisle | LGE2 |
| 1994/1995 | Sat 26 Nov | Carlisle | 1 - 1 | Doncaster | LGE2 |
| 1993/1994 | Sat 11 Dec | Carlisle | 4 - 2 | Doncaster | LGE2 |
End-of-season form guides
United had an excellent home record at the end of last season, as they charged towards the League Two title, winning five and losing just one of the last six games, although the step up in quality is sure to tell on that Brunton Park form during this campaign. A total of 11 goals were scored by the Cumbrians in those games, with six conceded.
Rovers had a decent run of form away from home in the last few months of the 2005-06 season, coming away with three victories and one draw from their last six games on the road. Doncaster both scoring seven goals, and conceding seven, in those matches as they fell just an agonising two points short of making the League One promotion play-offs.
For a detailed analysis of team form guides throughout the leagues, click here
| End-of-season form guides: | P | W | D | L | F | A | P |
| Carlisle | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 9 |
| Doncaster | 6 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 12 |
FootyMad's prediction ...
The Cumbrians were in a rich vein of form last season, but FootyMad has marked this down as a sequence-busting banker draw, taking into account the quality of the opposition. Score draw
| Sequence statistics: | |
| Carlisle | Nine games since last home draw. |
| Doncaster | Six games since last away draw. |