Saturday 16 May 2015 – 3.30pm
Kingston Park, Newcastle
Aviva Premiership #22
Look at the scoreline. Just beautiful, is it not? It’s taken a season of entertainment, frustration, gutting in Gloucester, excruciating in Exeter, more excruciating in Exeter, ecstasy at home to Exeter. Finally, a bit of madness in May when the Falcons scored five tries and got five points against Harlequins.
It was fully deserved. The Falcons were much the better team yesterday, and took apart a decent team for the first time in probably a couple of years. Was it our most dominant Premiership performance since the equivalent game in March 2011?
I’m certainly struggling to think of another one.
Everything just seemed to work yesterday. Even the tries we conceded involved individual errors, rather than problems in the system. Our attack was a joy to watch, from the rolling mauls that forced Richard Mayhew and Scott Lawson overs the line, to Mike Blair and Adam Powell’s breaks. Tom Catterick and JP Socino provided a great creative axis in midfield, Alesana Tuilagi was at his steamrolling best, and the forwards laid the foundation with a dominant performance in the set piece.
The only disappointments in attack from my point of view were Zach Kibirige never really getting chance to run at Quins during his welcome appearance from the bench, and Kieran Brookes not making it to the line when he made that fantastic break in the first half. Let’s not have any criticism of his ambitious offload, Brookes deserves credit for being in the position to do it in the first place.
It was good that we had a big crowd to see yesterday’s big performance, I would hope that it has swayed a few season ticket waverers. There was a real happy atmosphere around the ground I felt, and it’s not always been that way even this season. It’s always better to have a valiant defeat than losing a damp squib, but when you finally add a win to the big effort and the entertainment, you get a lively atmosphere that people will want to be a part of.
The challenge now is to replicate what we saw yesterday on a more consistent basis in 2015/16, and we will have the advantage of a long pre-season and plenty of games (Georgia and four in the Kings of the North) to do so. That performance and win has been coming, and now we’ve seen it, we need to do it more often so climb up the table next season. Of course we won’t score five tries in every win, but we should take great confidence that we can take on good sides and beat them well, so we can certainly beat them narrowly too. Turning just a few of the bonus-point defeats into wins will make a huge difference.
I’m excited now for the future in a way I probably haven’t been for a lot of years, because this season we have seen consistent efforts for growth and improvement. It’s slow, and there will be setbacks, but we’re really getting there.
Thanks for reading this season, I’ll be knocking around over the close season still sometimes, but until the sevens in August, have a great summer!
This weekend’s Eddie Stobarts:
Kayla
Heidi Valerie
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The South Stand Choir 