By Mark H
June 8 2005

To start off our Falcons At 10 series, Mark H takes a look back at the events of the 1995/96 season, and how that eventful year had an effect in the fledgling years of professionalism.

Interesting word that, professionalism.  To some, it’s a dirty word.  To others, it’s a sign of everything that is good about a subject, be it work, sport or life itself.  The word dominated rugby in 1995.  Ten years on, you tend not to think about it so much, but how did that difficult season of 1995/96 set up rugby in Newcastle for what was ahead?

 

The World Cup in South Africa had passed and had been a great success.  Or had it?  True, the rainbow nation had come back into the global game, in their own country, and led by their spearheads – Francois Pienaar, Nelson Mandela, and the nation’s sheer self-belief – they had taken the gold away from a powerful All Black side.  England had made the semis, gaining a modicum of revenge for the 1991 when Wasps’ Rob Andrew dropped a last minute goal to eliminate holders Australia, but were then steamrollered by Jonah Lomu.  Lomu now says that he was playing at 80% capacity having already been diagnosed with his kidney condition; in that case, how good could he have been?

 

What that tournament did show was how far most of the participating countries were from the absolute best.  Rumours had gone round seemingly forever that the southern hemisphere nations were, contrary to IRB guidelines and the “spirit” of the game, paying their players.  Similar accusations were abound in this country of under the table payments, the so-called shamateurism, going on at some clubs.  With Sky putting a huge television contract on the table for the SANZAR unions to expand the Super 10 and create an international tournament (which became the Tri-Nations), the pretence was finally broken and on 26 August 1995 the IRB declared, for the first time in a hundred years, that rugby union would be open.

 

The RFU declared that the game in England at club level would remain “amateur” for a year, whilst the international players would be paid for their services.  All that did was to cause the clubs to jump into immediate action to try to hold onto their best players or to try and poach from others.  And right in the middle of it were a team from the north east.

 

Newcastle Gosforth had finished in third in the second division in 1994/95, but had only avoided being in the bottom two by two points, such was the tightness of the league.  With Northampton having been relegated into the second division, but managing to maintain their full side, the promotion spots still looked a distance off (Saints eventually won the league with eighteen wins out of eighteen games).  As it turned out, it wasn’t 1995/96 that would be the year of progress, but the year of change at Kingston Park.

 

5^th September brought the announcement that Sir John Hall had bought a 76% control of Newcastle Gosforth to add to his Toon empire, and 16 days later came his choice of coach, with Rob Andrew leaving Wasps to become player-coach at Kingston Park in place of Harry Patrick.  The revolution had started.

 

Was it too much too soon though?  In his excellent 2001 book Midnight Rugby, Stephen Jones is quite scathing about Hall, accusing him of wanting to dominate rugby, along with other club owners such as Ashley Levett at Richmond, to such an extent that the owners would ultimately take control of the game away from the RFU.

 

Looking back now, and taking into account how the game has changed since Jones’ book was published, I would go so far to say that it wasn’t necessarily about the power, but about the money.  Take football as an example – the clubs almost now run the game (and ruin the game), with the governing bodies virtually powerless to threat and counter-threat of legal action.  TV has built football up, but the monster has become too big, and viewers are now turning off as they want a better product and not more of the same.

 

I’ve no doubt that Hall and Co wanted rugby to become a better game, but they appeared not to understand that in our game, the public and community feel is everything; it’s only relatively recently that it’s been accepted that individuals can’t make money out of rugby.  The major benefactors of recent years – Dave Thompson, Keith Barwell, Nigel Wray and Andrew Brownsword to name but a few – are supporters of their respective clubs first, money pits second.  Those who appeared to put the money first, those that didn’t understand the game, failed – Levett pulling the plug on Richmond saw them drop nine divisions, whilst Falcons were saved from a similar fate by Dave Thompson.  Indeed, you can go further and say that without the World Cup win, it’s arguable that the rise in attendance figures over the past two seasons would not have happened.

 

Back to September 1995.  Newcastle were undoubtedly the first of the clubs to really become fully professional, led by Andrew and backed by Hall’s money.  There wasn’t instant success – the Northampton resurgence tied up one of those promotion places early with the second being claimed by London Irish, and the 120 day rule that was in force then meant that signings couldn’t appear for nearly four months; consequently, the 1995/96 side struggled in the division.

 

Such was the recruitment drive though that in hindsight, although Andrew was building up a team that by May 1998 would be champions of England, he was also upsetting people along the way.  Not necessarily the clubs – although Wasps throwing out both Andrew and Dean Ryan after the signing of Nick Popplewell and Steve Bates was the most visible show of anger – but certainly supporters of other clubs, who would have seen his accumulation of assets and formed the opinion that he was buying the league.  It’s a matter of personal opinion as to whether this happened – much of the side was in place whilst in division two, so it’s definitely fair to say that the side was created to get into the Premiership (as it became), but to win it?

 

Any club that can attract the likes of Dean Ryan, Tony Underwood, Gary Armstrong and Doddie Weir (amongst others) would become better – I’m not sure though that the Newcastle public were ready for what was coming though.  As the big names continued to come in, just over a year after the takeover the Gosforth element, the lower level sides and the junior section, were dropped and forced to start again in Durham and Northumberland Division Four.  Hall then rebranded the club as the Falcons, and the new era really began, with two seasons not seen before or since.  It was as though the club was now ready to trample on anyone who got in their way, on or off the pitch, and it would not be the last decision made that would be looked back on in the future and seen as a bad one.

 

1995/96 season – Courage League Division Two

 

	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
Northampton (P)	18	18	0	0	867	203	36
London Irish (P)	18	15	0	3	584	405	30
London Scottish	18	10	2	6	361	389	22
Wakefield	18	8	0	10	328	331	16
Waterloo	18	7	2	9	309	483	16
Moseley	18	7	0	11	327	447	14
Blackheath	18	6	1	11	341	469	13
Newcastle Gosforth	18	5	1	12	348	405	11
Nottingham	18	5	1	12	333	433	11
Bedford	18	5	1	12	287	520	11

 

No relegation as divisions one and two expanded to twelve clubs.

 

Total club record

 

P	W	D	L	F	A
39	15	2	22	813	807

 

Players signed – Rob Andrew, Richard Arnold, Richard Metcalfe, Peter Walton, Graham Childs, Nick Popplewell, Dean Ryan, Steve Bates, Tony Underwood, Doddie Weir, Gary Armstrong, Tim Stimpson, Ross Nesdale, Garath Archer, Andy Blyth, George Graham, Steve O’Neill, and Martin Shaw.

 

Arnold, Metcalfe and Walton all left the club at the end of 1994/95 for West Hartlepool, but re-signed before the end of the 120 day eligibility period.

 

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Elsewhere, Bath won the league and cup double, with the cup win coming in the last minute 16-15 over Leicester.  The winning penalty try after Tigers collapsed a scrum on their own line was followed by Neil Back pushing referee Steve Lander over and earning himself a six month ban.  Another referee, Ashley Rowden, tells me that he made his league refereeing debut that season as well.  It was also the last recorded time that he was filmed sprinting.

 

And finally, how others saw Newcastle Gosforth – from the Northampton Saints season review for 1995/96, written by Northampton sports writer Brian Barron:-

 

“Nowhere personified the changing face of rugby more than at Kingston Park, home of Newcastle Gosforth.  Sir John Hall, Messiah of soccer in the North Easy, cast his sporting tentacles to embrace rugby, introducing Rob Andrew to undreamed of riches to mastermind the revolution on the same lines that Kevin Keegan had done at St James’s Park.

 

Andrew waved his cheque book and players came running, notably from his old club, Wasps, and in the week leading up to the Saints game, the England stand-off announced his retirement to ‘concentrate on successfully developing the Newcastle Sporting Club’.  That didn’t actually mean watching the game, Andrew choosing instead to be at Sudbury for the Wasps-Leicester clash.  If the players didn’t already know, this was a clear signal that not may of them would be part of Newcastle’s long term planning.  Newcastle were bottom at the time with just one win, but club officials seemed pretty sure even at that stage that there would be no relegation.”

 

Next up – the birth of the Falcons.