By Leipziger
May 2 2006

Today our Falcons showed everything good about their attacking talents, but unfortunately too much poor defence to score a win.

The nine-try thriller was the first match following the controversial release of David Walder from Kingston Park, and saw Ollie Phillips, Toby Flood, Johnny Williams and Cory Harris join the starting XV, with Ben Woods moving to 8.  Hall Charlton and Matt Thompson were rotated in.

 

For the first 15 minutes or so we never made it into the Worcester half, and the home attacking bore fruit when referee Ashley Rowden ignored the most blatant offside from the Worcester tighthead, and Kai Horstmann romped past Phillips to score on the right.  From the kickoff Worcester came straight back upfield and Gary Trueman broke through several tackles to score.  Shane Drahm’s conversion meant that just like that we were 12-0 down.

 

Newcastle then had a little spell of possession, with Nick Runciman sin-binned, and Phillips was missed on a great overlap.  Jamie Noon then looked to have scored on the left but he was stopped by Trueman.  A Drahm penalty increased our disadvantage.  Flood got us back into the game by kicking and chasing a low ball from a try, which Matthew Burke converted.  Drahm kicked another three points though when Mathew Tait was sin-binned for not moving away from a tackle.

 

Worcester talisman Pat Sanderson then waltzed through our backs, and Drahm again converted.  From our knock-on upfield, Worcester attacked and made several passes before tackles could bring them down.  We managed to defend though, and went into half time 25-7 down.

 

During the interval Rob Andrew brought on Jonny Wilkinson and Micky Ward, and it seemed to work as Burke steamed through for an early try.  Wilkinson couldn’t convert, and Worcester secured their bonus point when Runciman dived in from close range and James Brown converted and we were now 20 points down.  Our more determined demeanour though saw Mike McCarthy forced over for a further try which went unconverted, but we were dealt a blow when Andy Perry was yellow-carded for a high tackle (seemingly the only player still able to be penalised for this) and Brown kicked an easy penalty.

 

Ollie Phillips redeemed himself for early problems by making a strong run almost to the line then offloading to Burke who went easily over for his second try.  However he resumed kicking duties but still couldn’t convert.  Another good break from Tait, one of the game’s positive from our point of view, saw him set up Tom May for another unconverted try, but as we searched for at least another bonus point, Worcester played out the end of the match in our half and we had to be content with five tries but a defeat.

 

This was an extremely strange game at times, with both sides exhibiting good attacking and poor defence throughout.  The main difference seemed for me to be Worcester’s ball retention and our defending in their half, as numerous times the Warriors made easy yards very quickly.  In the same position, we were kept to touch kicking.

 

Man of the match was for me Mathew Tait, but the attention (and not in a good way) should be more generally on the forwards to work out why we didn’t have enough ball, and the backs as to why our defence was so slow.  Scoring five tries away from home and still losing is shocking, with better defence and more ball we would have won.