By Mally (11/04/03)
April 11 2003

Saturday's match will hopefully see Falcons' playing David to Gloucester's Goliath as with Bath scoring a last minute try to beat London Irish, Newcastle Falcons dropped down to the bottom of the table once more. Gloucester are currently riding high having won the Powergen Cup last weekend, and are 7 points clear at the top of the Zurich Premiership table with 5 games left to play. The recent league meetings between Newcastle and Gloucester have had a certain degree of friction. The match at Kingsholm last season was marred by the the Azam / Taione racism row, and Gloucester won this season's game up at Kingston Park with a controversial penalty 5 minutes into injury time. (See match report: Falcons 19 Glaws 22 )

Gloucester are playing some lovely rugby, they are not simply a team with good forwards, they have class throughout the side. Power and pace with the likes of Jamie Forrester, James Simpson-Daniel and Marcel Garvey. Also Henry Paul, at outside centre is finely starting to show that he can be as good at union as he was playing league for the Bradford Bulls.

Gloucester are a formidable force at home, and none of the pundits are expecting Newcastle to come away with a win - the Rugby Club's Dewi Morris diplomatically stressing how good our current home form is!

However all unbeaten runs have to come to an end some time, and Newcastle Falcons are on form at the moment, having won 3 out of their last 4 league matches.

No squad details have been yet released, but hopefully Wilkinson has had chance to recover from the knock he took in Dublin and will be playing. As Duncan Madsen points out in his article "Drop watch fascinating rugby fans":

"However, with Jonny Wilkinson and Mark Andrews in the side, Newcastle have rediscovered their self-belief in a big way and you should never write them off entirely, not even at Gloucester."

Looking at the run in, as Bath (who are on 32 points) have just two games remaining and a maximum of 10 points available, Newcastle Falcons need to pick up at least 13 points from their remaining 4 games to absolutely guarantee staying up. A win on Saturday would be a huge bonus, but if a win isn't on the cards then the team will have to scrap for that lose bonus point.

I am not expecting a Falcons win on Saturday, and if I'm honest I'm not even expecting Newcastle to get the lose bonus point, however what do I know? Nearly every time I try and predict the result I get it wrong....

One thing is certain - the way the Falcons have been playing recently Gloucester are not going to have it easy.

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Gloucester v Newcastle Falcons

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