Bath Destroyed In Second Half By Falcons

By Glen Leat
April 28 2002

After a very slow start in which the home side struggled to fight their way in to the Bath quarter throughout the first half, the Falcons eventually let themselves off the leash to give the visitors a damn good hammering by scoring five tries and winning 36-9.

Michael Foley has a very big task ahead of him if he wants to see Bath contesting anything, let alone honours, next season; and he'll need to introduce a few more new players in addition to Jonathan Humphreys if the current crop of young stars are to be helped to fulfill their potential. Three Ollie Barkley penalties was all Bath could muster in the windy North East, whilst Newcastle enjoyed a free flowing second half which saw them score four ties to add to a first half try by Tom May. Jonny Wilkinson missed one of the conversions but that was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

What is really disappointing is that Bath kept the score down to 10-9 to the Falcons at half-time but instead of building on this excellent achievement, they allowed the home side to muscle them out of the game for yet another humiliating defeat.

At a time of great pain for all Bath fans there was a moment of fun at the game when the prize draw tickets got caught by the wind and blew across the pitch, a great bit of farce which may have been more appropriate at the Rec this season!

Oh dear it's Glaws next week who, after getting dumped out of the Parker Pen Shield by one point this week-end, will be desperate to rub our noses in the mud and send us crashing to defeat. On the basis of today's performance it seems more likely that the cherry and whites will be singing a lot louder than the blue, black and whites next Saturday evening.

Let's look at how you voted on whether Bath would win this match. A bit over optimistic perhaps?