Newcastle Red Bulls
Keep the faith!
By Leipziger
September 11 2010
It's never simple is it? I blame myself. A key system crashing at work during Thursday night, a fire at Kings Cross just as the tube I was on approached, and signalling problems around Newark delaying me getting into Newcastle by nearly an hour. So was Wasps' early try really a surprise? Perhaps it shouldn't have been. What came after, considering our home form in the past year or two, was quite amazing though, and it provided both players and fans with a timely boost to morale.
There were split opinions amongst supporters going into this, our first home game of the league season against Wasps. Either we had suffered a lack of preparation and still needed time to bed in, or what we did in the first game hadn't got us a win so therefore we needed to throw it all away and try something completely different.
Redford Pennycook for Will Welch was the only change in Alan Tait's forward pack, while Micky Young and Jimmy Gopperth came into the half-back positions and Luke Fielden replaced Alex Tait in the number 15 shirt. Dave Walder was no doubt looking forward to another KP win in the Wasps back-line, pushing Riki Flutey back into the centres.
Wasps won a penalty in the first few minutes (anybody at the game will know why time had no meaning before the interval) and Mark Van Gisbergen's kick went wide, however indecision amongst the Falcons inexplicably allowed Tom Varndell to score. The one-time (few-minute) England full-back added the conversion.
If the Newcastle players were shell-shocked, the fans were equally so and we remained that way for much of the first half. A Jimmy Gopperth penalty reduced the deficit but the Falcons were riddled by ill-discipline and poor handling, not helped by a referee JP Doyle who like his counterpart at Sale seemed intent on penalising us for knock-ons even when there had been none.
Wasps' dominance paid off with a try on the outside by Ben Jacobs, Van Gisbergen converting, and a penalty left us 3-17 down who-knows-how long into the first half. Finally the Falcons rallied and from a penalty kicked to the corner, our forwards foraged away before Pennycook fought over for a try on his first start in a black shirt.
Gopperth kicked over a long-range penalty before half-time to leave us within touching distance of Wasps at the break, but there was work to be done in the dressing room.
And how it worked! Early in the second half the forwards were again given the task of driving the attack, and Tim Swinson scored in a central position early on to give Gopperth a simple conversion.
The fly-half sent in a drop-goal from the left soon after but despite the crowd's cheers, it was ruled wide, although another penalty gave us a six-point lead.
Named man of the match, Gopperth kicked two further penalties, one from 50 metres out on the far right, for a 12-point advantage, as Alan Tait introduced numerous fresh legs including Alex Tait, Kieran Brookes, Jeremy Manning and Will Welch.
Wasps had their own rally late in the second half and again their forwards did a lot of the work, although the referee was lenient during a number of their moves. With less than ten minutes to go he sent Ally Hogg to the sin bin, despite only blowing the whistle when replacement Glen Townson cleared out a Wasps player.
With some resolute defending though, in front of the roaring South Stand, the Falcons were finally able to win a scrum on our five-metre line and Chris Pilgrim, on for Micky Young, cleared. We managed to disrupt Wasps lineouts enough to hang on for a morale-boosting 29-17 win.
This win should give us hope that this season will be better than recent ones, there were lots of good things, not least the continued strength of our forwards, although we weren't as dominant in the scrum as at Sale. The number of drops and knock-ons really needs addressing, and whatever happened at Wasps' first try must never happen again.
That's before I mention the return of a bit of aimless kicking and not chasing.
But there is certainly hope, and we now have some momentum to take into the massive game we have at Exeter next week.
And perhaps most tellingly of all from the supporters' point of view, something happened last night that hasn't happened too often in the past couple of years. I, and I am sure many many others, left KP wearing a huge smile.
P.S. Thanks to Monkey for the headline, certainly seems appropriate.
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At the MOTM presentation, Jimmy admitted to the first try being his fault - good on you mate!
It must be so much easier for you to write the report when we win! What a surprise that the clock went AWOL in the first half - I thought we haven't played 20 minutes yet and realised that when the clock stopped at 20:08 it had stopped at 8 minutes past 8.
Credit to the car park stewards as well. We arrived at 7.15, no queue and directed straight to the green parking area - the proper tarmaced (sp?) area with marked bays and no mud or potholes!!
Still smiling
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