Newcastle Falcons 21 London Irish 26

This gift of possession led to an over-eagerness of the rattled Newcastle forwards to retrieve the ball at the tackle area. Referee Fox penalised them, and Barry Everitt kicked 7 penalties to punish them. A fine Riki Flutey try, scored against 14 men, was balanced against two excellent Newcastle tries, and London Irish survived the inevitable late fightback. Matt Burke missed a couple of difficult penalties and a touchline conversion, but the gift of regular lineout ball was the platform for this away win.

The game overall.

Of the different factors deciding the outcome of the game, the LI lineout unit including Neal Hatley won Gold medal. Our lineout has been taking Gold consistently since Gary Gold coached the forwards, but set a new record in this performance under tutelage of Toby Booth. At last autumns 'Meet the coaches' Toby described how we'd competed in lineout practice against England - "Stole all theirs, Won all ours". So it was against the Falcons. They were magnificent, and I'll give a description later in the report.

Silver medal went to the Newcastle backs, which were highly impressive in attack and defence. Both wings scored tries, the teenage Dutch sensation Visser, and the evergreen Kiwi Mayerhofler, and their defensive pattern and positioning prevented us from utilising our wealth of possession.

Bronze medal as a factor would be the referee who spotted every offence, including blocking and holding back of players, but mostly players entering rucks from the side, tackler not rolling away, and generally everything at the breakdown which prevents a good game. In the conditions of pouring rain, and therefore a wet pitch and wet ball, anything less than his strict application would have short changed the spectators. That we did see the sodden ball moving through hands as much as we did, rather than staying hidden on the deck, was due to Mr Fox. Time and again the Newcastle forwards tried to steal the ball back illegally at the breakdown, and they got pinged. Everything kickable, Barry slotted over. Everything from distance became our lineout further down the pitch.

Record Breaker

The first half.

Newcastle gained a penalty in front right from the kick-off which we fumbled, but Barry soon got us back on terms after our first stolen lineout. It was 3-3 and soon after Newcastle scored the best try of the game.

A Newcastle scrum just outside our 22 was stable enough to allow the scrum half to pick out fly half Toby Flood. In what is either great vision, or more likely a training ground move, Flood executed a cross-field kick for Visser hugging the far touchline. The tall rangy 19yr old caught the ball cleanly out of the rain and Floodlights. He also had the presence of mind to step back, stay infield, and hand off the oncoming Michael Horak in to
touch. With a clear run to the line, he also ran the ball in towards the posts to make Matt Burkes conversion that much easier.

I think it's slightly easier to kick to the John Smiths stand, but with the rain and the lights, kicking a wet ball off slippery turf isn't easy at all. So that was 10-3 to the home side after quarter of an hour. My first view of Visser and the vision and creativity of the Newcastle halfbacks had me concerned. The team showed more composure than I did. We continued to advance down the field on a diet of stolen lineout ball. If an army marches on its stomach, this team gorged on Newcastle generosity. 2 penalties from Barry brought the score to 10-9 and we hadn't made a line break. We just waited for the Newcastle flankers to donate 3 points, the scull caps just barely keeping their brains in.

The turning point of the first half came when Mr Fox ran out of patience with prop David Wilson and sent him to the sin bin. It had been Wilson who was getting the tight five together in the breaks between play, urging and advising, motivating. To sympathise, the forwards, were having to battle hard in defence, losing 50m at almost every line-out, and small acts of frustration and desperation were punished by the referee and Barry's clinical kicking.

Newcastle kicked ahead and Topsy Ojo raced through to return the kick, on being tackled Wilson just lay all over him. Easy yellow. Riki took the kick but failed to find touch with the penalty, in fact he compounded his error in kicking from hand by pushing it long, resulting in a scrum back to the Falcons. At this point I slapped my forehead with my palm, DOH! Pity I couldn't reach to kick Riki's arse. It was in fact a rare aberration in a controlled personal performance. In fact the team looked calm and assured, a long way from the previous match. I think Shane spilled a ball forward in contact, but I struggle to recall any other error in difficult conditions.

In Wilson's absence London Irish scored a penalty and a try. The try came from Riki Flutey, scored to the left of the posts in silence, after Kieran Roche managed to stand up in the tackle and offload. He certainly drew the tackle and created the gap. We were moving the ball from the scrum right to left quickly from Rees' flat pass, and it was our good handling overall on the night that helped. Barry unaccountably missed the conversion. It was at the same end and area where Burke missed too late penalties, so there may be some factor in sighting. Or coincidence. 10-14 and London Irish were in front for the first time. I briefly wondered how many of our tries we are converting, not as many as I'd like. More 7's please LI, let's maximise the 5's.

We used our one-man forward advantage intelligently, and Newcastle varied their transgressions by taking down our maul illegally. Barry kicked the penalty 10-17. Mike Catt took a knock and was replaced by Shane Geraghty and we reorganised, generally from the scrum we went Rees, Flutey, Geraghty, and Everitt. But we varied the arrangement; there was flexibility. We extended the lead to 10-20, before we were finally recognised as offside within kicking range, so 13-20 and half time. It's not that we weren't offside; it's just that we weren't offside in kicking range, and we stole the lineout when they kicked it to touch. It was getting embarrassing. Probably the best example was a punt forward, which Topsy tried to catch on the touchline. In the rain and lights he only directed the ball into touch for a Newcastle throw midway in our half - we stole the lineout, it was surreal.

Bazza the Boot

The second half.

At half-time I switched from drinking white wine, handling binoculars, taking notes, helping wave a flag, telling filthy jokes and winding up the Falcons fans with cries of "Scotland, Scotland". For the second half I drank 2 pint buckets of Guinness, and spoke sympathetically to the Geordies about lineouts and nepotism. It seems that during these difficult financial times the chairman owner has generously supplied his own son as hooker to the team for the last four years. One speculated that he could do better to put his son out as a rent boy and use the money to fund a real rugby player. I mused if his knees were up to it.

There seemed to be no substitutions at half time but soon after each side were sending players on and off, and it was difficult to keep up. It was a scrappy bit of play, with stoppage, sub, stoppage, sub like an endless loop stuck on video.

Burke opened the second half scoring with a penalty on 56 minutes to close the gap, and you wondered whether there would be another drastic change in fortunes, but soon the pattern of the first half continued and dependable Barry edged us out in front again to 16-23 with around 15 minutes to go.

Newcastle upped the pressure and pace in the final minutes and forced penalties. The crowd made a fair amount of noise, not all of which was started by the announcer. In fact Burke missed 2 difficult chances that could have added to the pressure. But their talented backs were running at pace, and passing quickly. They were also getting rid of it quickly to put Mayerhofler in the far left corner with 5 minutes to go. The key to the try was the speed with which they created the overlap and space for Mayerhofler, and rather than the miss pass it was the speed of passing and running, admirable handling.

Burke missed the conversion from the touchline, and the score was 21-26. A similar move a couple of minutes later ended with a spilled take of a ball below the knees from the centre, from a hurried pass forced by our defence. It was the last significant moment and the game ended 21-26.

The Newcastle fans trooped out disconsolately, and the team came over to applaud the travelling fans. We few, we happy happy few, we band of brothers. We'd been spread through the stands, and we were very few in number, but we were happy. I got some pictures with the players; Phil Murphy, Olivier Magne, Mike Catt, Neal Hatley and others chatted, signed things and posed for photographs before their long coach trip back. Some of us supporters then drank upstairs in the clubhouse bar until they closed it; most went back to the Twin Farms.

Magne-fique & Catty

Key areas of discussion were our lineouts, how they won us a phenomenal amount of ball. We lost one of our own, possibly two. Newcastle may have won 4 of their own but lost the rest. Opta stats should reveal it. We started early with the theft, and they overthrew. They seemed to throw to the middle, or to the back, rarely if ever to the front. Our lifters were extremely mobile and both Kennedy and Hudson were thrown high with great timing. The pressure was enormous, Bisach was calling "catch & drive Irish" on the Falcon throw. It was prophetic, and demoralised and quietened the crowd. This in turn added pressure for the forwards to try to regain the ball at the tackle area.

However, given that enormous amount of possession we rarely amounted an attacking move of our backs against their backs. Falcons had a sweeper and a cover; which ruled out kicking or chipping through. Tactically this was sound, the grubber kick behind a rushing defence was well policed, and they were quickly up on the ball carrier. Although Geraghty dummied, and Topsy danced and beat 2 men there was always another man. Visser has scored 3 tries in as many games, but also has an excellent defence. The Ojo-Visser battle finished with the Dutch boy ahead on points, but on the losing side. Topsy knows what it's like to play well and be a loser, this time he did his usual good performance, was well watched and ended on the winning side.

My Man of the Match will be cool header Barry Everitt for his 7 penalties. But Toby Booth and the lineout unit won the match for us.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon