Sale managed to shade a dour, rain-dominated encounter courtesy of a Charlie Hodgson try and ran out 9-14 winners, the Falcons managing to scrape a losing bonus point through nine points from the boot of Clegg.

Early injury woes hit Bates at this early stage of the season; Geoff Parling fracturing a cheekbone courtesy of some shenanigans at the bottom of a ruck and Brent Wilson breaking a bone in his hand. It would be November before we would see the leaping Parling in a black shirt once more, giving first-team bragging rights to the coltish Tim Swinson.

Next up for the Falcons were the newly-promoted Northampton Saints, eager to stake their claim on Premiership survival as they travelled north to Kingston Park. The reintegration of Jonny Wilkinson into the Falcons team seemed to revitalise the squad and a deserved 32-22 victory helped dispel the gloom of losing to Sale the previous week – tries from Andy Buist and Ollie Phillips were bolstered by 22 points from the magic boots of Wilkinson, racking up a full house in terms of kicking duties with a 100% display including a 45-metre drop goal in the dying minutes to deny the Saint a losing bonus point.

The euphoria couldn’t last, and the trip to Vicarage Road in late September really showed the gulf in class between a physical Saracens side and a shell-shocked Falcons squad who surrendered in the face of a furious Fez onslaught. 44-14 does not really tell the full story and certainly doesn’t fully illustrate the disparity between the two teams; late consolation scores from Wilkinson and May allowed the Falcons to get into double figures but for much of the game the Falcons appeared to be heading for a nilling, such was the ferocity of the Saracens attack. Five tries from the Watfordians put the Falcons to the sword and made for a fairly depressing trip home on the bus.

Steve Bates could offer no excuses for his team’s desperately poor performance, calling it “real fingers-in-the-dyke stuff” and saying that “very important lessons” would be taken away from the game in preparation for the Friday night match up against Bristol at Kingston Park. The media were already billing this as a potential relegation decider but Bates was in bullish mood and refused to concede that the loser was on their way out of the Premiership.

Tim Visser was drafted in to replace the ill Ollie Phillips with Jonny Wilkinson making his third consecutive start for the Falcons: indeed, it was the talismanic flyhalf who converted tries from Balding and Rudd and added a penalty to send Bristol back to the South West on the back of a 17-3 beating.

Consecutive home wins seemed to be setting a seed of desire in the hearts of the squad but, as October beckoned, no complacency could be allowed to creep in: next up was a trip to Castle Grim in deepest Gloucestershire and a ridiculously-timetabled Tuesday night fixture against a Gloucester side currently struggling along in ninth place.

As I write this in late April 2009 after the season-concluder against Harlequins, the Gloucester game of October 1^st marks the last time we saw Jonny Wilkinson playing for the Falcons – slotting a penalty after only two minutes on the clock, Wilkinson succumbed to a dislocation of the knee in the first half and was helped from the field, Clegg taking his place at flyhalf. Tries from Matt Thompson, Tom May and Phil Dowson were just not enough to damped the spirits of an exuberant Gloucester side, revelling in the defensive frailties inherent to the Falcons squad: Ian Balshaw scored a hat-trick and Sinbad added a brace of tries in a comprehensive 39-23 victory at Kingsholm.

By all accounts, Steve Bates was incandescent in the changing room after the game and making it clear, in no uncertain terms, that performances of that nature would contribute to a gradual slide into First Division rugby next season: “Words have been had in the changing room, none of them broadcastable, and I think without going in to too much detail you can guess the gist of those words because we shot ourselves in the foot tonight,” Bates said in his press release after the Kingsholm debacle, desperate to get some consistency together after a good hiding on the Tuesday night and a Friday night EDF opening game against the Dragons hot on its heels.

Next: Cup classics?

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