It’s all well and good playing youth and fringe players in this farcical tournament, and they need game time, but losing doesn’t improve anyone’s morale ahead of one of our toughest away trips of the season to Northampton. 

Having said that, our back five yesterday was arguably at full-strength with Alex Tait, Rob Vickerman and Tane Tu’ipulotu starting.  Matt Thompson, Alex Walker and Pete Browne kept their places in the pack and Mark Wilson started at blindside.  Hall Charlton was captain opposite Mark Robinson, who lined up with Dave Walder, Mark van Gisbergen and Dan Ward-Smith in a mixed Wasps team missing several internationals. 

The Falcons started brightly and Alex Tait popped around a ruck and ran through a gap to score under the posts, but the referee disallowed the try for crossing despite few fans having seen an obvious block. 

Browne and Charlton made some searching runs but there were few clear chances, although the skipper could have isolated van Gisbergen on the 22 if he had kept chasing a kick at speed rather than slowing down as the ex-England full-back gathered. 

Rob Miller opened the scoring with a penalty, and combined with Danny Williams to force Walder to carry a kick over the line and another defender to touch down to prevent a try.  The decision to kick the scoring penalty was unpopular amongst the 4,612 (allegedly) in attendance, particularly as the lineout and maul were going well. 

The same couldn’t be said for our scrum; although Micky Ward held up well, Matt Thompson often went backwards.  Both lasted only 40 minutes but on what I’ve seen I’d be very wary of having Thompson prop in the Premiership. 

Just before half-time Walder equalised with a penalty and at the break Carl Hayman and Grant Shiells came on in the front row. 

Our scrum seemed to stabilise, though we never dominated this area and Wasps controlled the early part of the second half overall.  Their forwards were particularly strong in loose play and only some defending on the line prevented their front row from scoring on the left, while an interception on the Wasps right foiled a promising away attack. 

Walder put Wasps into the lead for the first time with his second penalty, and the only real chances we had in the second 40 were when Charlie Amesbury chased a kick down the right flank but a defender grounded the ball first, and another attack stopped in front of the try-line late on. 

Much of the last 20-25 minutes was a kicking contest and not even the introduction of Jimmy Gopperth, Gcobani Bobo and Tom Biggs could inspire Newcastle. 

Although we had a little spell in the Wasps half in the last ten minutes, overall we didn’t look like scoring a try in a month of Sundays never mind 80 minutes of one, and a third Walder penalty sealed Wasps’ fourth successive win at KP. 

I don’t really want to dwell on what was a pretty poor game, after all anyone who cared about it will have been there and made their own conclusions already. 

My feeling at full-time though was that apart from visiting my brother and savouring Mrs Slacker’s quite amazing blueberry cake, I’d wasted a day of life. There were some positives – Josh Afu and Pete Browne were quite lively and despite recent injury Tane Tu’ipulotu also had a good game.  Apart from Charlie Amesbury who looked uncomfortable late on, we hopefully have no new injuries ahead of the infinitely more important game at Northampton too.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

Related Articles:

• Hookers party but Falcons lose
• My favourite waste of time
• Out of the Cup