By Falcon1 (assisted by Sponge)
November 2 2002

Friday night - so what’s on TV? Looks like just the usual suspects. Hang on ‘Operation Falcon’? Must be a wholesome family natural history programme, but what strange time to broadcast it. But what’s that - a warning that some viewers might find the content disturbing?? Oh well, let’s watch it … Turned out that this was a programme, narrated by Dawn Thewlis, about the adventures that befell the Newcastle Falcons lads as they participated in the latest pre-season training event to emerge from ‘conditioning guru’ Blackie – a couple of days with the army at the Otterburn Range.

Blackie, filling the screen, emphasised that the boys were not going to play soldiers, but rather to move out of the comfort zone and discover something about themselves. A little more worrying was Lt Col. Pat Parson’s assertion at the pre-event briefing that he was going to turn Blackie’s highly-tuned Porsches (?) into Landrovers (?!). This prompted apprehensive looks from all the players - except for Marius Hurter who was grinning like a cat with the cream.

It was clear that one aim of the exercise would be to get the team to function as a single, coherent unit. So the first thing that happened was that the team was split into three groups.

Travelling across Otterburn Range in three minibuses – have we been shown the composition of Bates’ minibus crews? – the mini-buses were ambushed. Everyone immediately ran for cover, except for Tom May who by his own admission didn’t realise what was happening until a mortar went off (nothing new there, then).

Task 1 was to build a shelter. Whilst the Blue Team won this event, a recurrent theme of the two days emerged – the Orange Team cheated! Specifically, Sloth had ‘stolen some twigs’ (puts Neil Back’s misdemeanour into context!) and as a consequence was ‘ruffled’ by Hurter.

What a nice lilt that Stephenson has...

The next task was to cross a river without getting wet. The Orange Team won, the Black Team came last and it was announced that certain players were emerging as leaders – or at least Ward was shouting a lot.

And Tom May took his top off...

Seven hours had passed without food. The teams were told that to win their food rations they had to stalk through the undergrowth without being spotted. Few succeeded, but perhaps the surprising thing was that six feet tall, bleached haired Stevo won the event!

At last, food! From the boxes emerged the chickens – squawking and flapping.

Now it is at this point that the real hard men emerge – who do you think took to killing chickens with their bare hands better than anyone? Ward? Peel? Brotherstone? Nope – Sloth and Noon are the killers!

Is this the point to mention that I am a vegetarian?

Dave Walder was happy to stand back as his partner Jamie Noon despatched chicken after chicken into oblivion.

Tom May, meanwhile, went for a change of clothes and returned once the dastardly deeds had been done (nothing new there, then).

So what’s wrong with looking nice...

In fact, Noon and Sloth were emerging as the stars of the event. Noon pronounced it to be ‘like a camping holiday’ whilst Sloth was revealing his attributes as a ‘huntin, shootin and fishin man’ brought up on three Shredded Wheats a day!

As they settled down for the night, Tom May professed to being concerned about the creepy crawlies and seemed equally apprehensive at Dawn Thewlis’ hairy microphone boom (nothing new there, then).

Morning found Mark Wilkinson ‘massively confident’ after talking tactics all night and Noon bereft of a shoe after his trainer burnt on the camp-fire whilst drying it.

For the next task the players donned hoods to stimulate darkness. Noon however soon found that with a little adjustment you could see out of the hoods – leading to more righteous accusations of cheating, especially from Marius Hurter.

The final task was the log race. The teams had to run a course taking turns to carry a tree trunk. The Orange Team won, the Black Team came through for second place, whilst the Blue Team plodded in last – mainly due to Peel and Ward who ‘blew a gasket’ after 10 metres (nothing new there, then).

So what was the judgement on this unorthodox pre-season training session?

Blackie diplomatically suggested that some players had thrived under pressure and emerged as leaders whilst others ‘showed another side to their personality’.

Back in the clubhouse, the Boss watched the video of the event (that’s right, he had not actually taken part in the event, sorry did we not explain that earlier?) and did something that we rarely see. He laughed. In fact he seemed to find the sight of Ward in agony particularly amusing…..

With a sadistic glint in the eye, he also suggested that the players were already worried about next season’s pre-season training ….

For me, well I am still not sure whether the event turned Porsches into Landrovers, but at least we know who we can rely upon for the Summer BBQ.

Oh and Dave looked really cute...

Now I wonder which bits were written by Falcon1 and which by Sponge... If there's a Falcons' issue you want to write about then please email me on: Mally - tykefalcon@hotmail.com