By Leipziger
September 8 2006

This Friday sees the first appearance of the permanent Friday Night Falcons at Kingston Park in a competitive game, as the 2006/07 Premiership hits the North East.

The club and supporters will have a keen eye on the attendance figure for an early indication whether the experiment to play on Friday evenings will work in attracting higher crowds to our ground than did Sunday afternoons.

 

It’s probably not the most inspiring match we could have hoped for to get in a big crowd, however our meeting with Worcester is an important match as both teams are amongst the relegation tips this season – it could be an early eight-pointer.

 

Worcester like ourselves were beaten on the first weekend of the season, however whilst we could have beaten Northampton and lost only 25-23, the Warriors were destroyed 41-11 at Sixways by Bristol, their only points coming from a Phil Murphy try and two Shane Drahm penalties as Bristol ran in five scores.

 

Worcester bring a decent looking team north as they look to repeat their 16-21 victory at Kingston Park in April 2005, and avoid a repeat of our win against them at home last season, when  Matthew Burke inspired the Falcons to a fifth win in six games.  The pack boasts strong Welsh international prop Darren Morris and Pat Sanderson in the back row, a top-class star who captained England in the summer.

 

In the backs, Drahm will be looking to unleash the talented pair of wings Marcel Garvey and Springbok Thinus Delport, as well as Frenchman Thomas Lombard in the centre.  Worcester line up like so:-

1 Darren Morris

2 Chris Fortey

3 Tevita Taumoepeau

4 Craig Gillies

5 Phil Murphy

6 Pat Sanderson  (c)

7 Tom Harding

8 Drew Hickey

9 Matt  Powell

10 Shane Drahm

11 Marcel Garvey

12 Simon Whatling

13 Thomas Lombard

14 Thinus Delport

15 Lee Best

 

Replacements: 16  Chris Horsman, 17 Ben Gotting, 18 Richard Blaze, 19 Kai Horstmann, 20 James Brown, 21 Miguel Avramovic, 22 Mark Tucker

 

John Fletcher has named Dutch wing/flanker Tim Visser, who scored a hat-trick for the reserves on Sunday, on the bench in what could be a competitive home debut for both of them (definitely for new DoR Fletcher).  Ollie Phillips is on the wing to replace the injured Anthony Elliott, and the only other changes are the predictable and frustrating rotation of the hookers and scrum-halves:-

 

15 Matthew Burke (captain)

14 Tom May

13 Jamie Noon

12 Toby Flood

11 Ollie Phillips

10 Jonny Wilkinson

9 James Grindal

1 Micky Ward

2 Matt Thompson

3 Robbie Morris

4 Andy Perry

5 Andy  Buist

6 Brent Wilson

7 Ben Woods

8 Phil Dowson

 

Replacements:  David Wilson, Andy Long, Mike McCarthy, Cory Harris, Hall Charlton, Tim Visser, Joe Shaw.

 

A win in this game is important as  a morale-booster for supporters worried about the size of the squad, for the  team and also to ensure we can continue to get in big crowds.  After Bristol’s big win last week, a defeat for us against Worcester would leave us vulnerable already at the bottom of the triumvirate of expected  relegation battlers.

 

And finally…

 

At the Premiership launch a fortnight ago, Mark posed Burkey the question “is there any difference playing Friday nights compared to Saturdays or Sundays?”  God’s answer?

 

“If I was at home, I’d say it’d be better to play on a Saturday afternoon because the suns comes out.  Friday nights at home get very wet and sweaty, and the ball gets quite difficult.  Here, I don’t think so, I think it’ll be ok.  I enjoy playing them [Friday nights] – having played most of my professional career under lights, I’m pretty familiar with it.  For people sometimes it can be difficult, for the players [not used to it] especially, sitting around and a bit of boredom sets in.  There’s always a good atmosphere at an evening game, and Fridays hopefully will spark us into gear.  Hopefully it’ll be of benefit to everyone.  If you win your home games, and it’s on Friday night, it sort of becomes a bit of a tradition.  Going down to Friday night games at some of these places can be tough, so [we] want to make it not a great experience for teams to come to the North East.”