Falcons v Glaws

The teams are up for tomorrow night’s clash. Neither team are in particularly good form and Glaws don’t have a good record at Kingston Park. The weather conditions don’t look as bad as previous years, so hopefully the KP wind factor won’t be as much of an issue this time round...

My natural unbias view gives this a Glaws win by 5.

FALCONS
Greg Goosen; Suka Hufanga, Corne Uys, James Fitzpatrick, Ryan Shortland; Jimmy Gopperth, Jordi Pasqualin; Grant Shiells, Michael Mayhew, Euan Murray; James Hudson (C), Andrew Van Der Heijden; Taiasina Tuifua, Will Welch, Ally Hogg

Replacements:

Joe Graham, Ashley Wells, Dan Frazier, Adriaan Fondse, Mark Wilson, Chris Pilgrim, Jamie Helleur, Tom Catterick


GLAWS
Olly Morgan; James Simpson-Daniel, Mike Tindall, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, Tom Voyce; Freddie Burns, Dave Lewis; Nick Wood, Scott Lawson, Rupert Harden; Will James, Jim Hamilton; Alasdair Strokosch, Akapusi Qera, Luke Narraway (C)

Replacements:

Matias Cortese, Dan Murphy, Dario Chistolini, Peter Buxton, Brett Deacon, Rory Lawson, Tim Taylor, Henry Trinder

Hell, every time I see a Falcons squad announcement I feel depressed these days. There's SO many journeymen in that squad, what has Tait done??? Even when things were going bad before, we still had a youngster worth a poach, now there's what? Maybe Will Welch, Mark Wilson and Tom Catterick that can be argued as academy products. It's just Flip depressing.

I must admit I had the same feelings when I saw the team, as normally you could always count on your team being full off youngsters.

It's unfortunate for you that we have EFS and Sinbad back, as they should provide the creative spark we've been crying out for in recent weeks.

I'm telling you Cumbrian getting relegated could be the best thing for Falcons.

1- Get relegated. Get the 1m parachute payment and use it to get all your promising youngsters contracted for a couple of seasons.
2- Shoot all the crap journeymen players and cherry pick some Championship talent.
3- Get plenty of wins under your belts, especially with all the young lads the more wins the better they'll feel and the more likely they'll be to sign on.
4- Win some silverware. Nothing compares to the winning feeling.
5- Get promoted. Come back up and get another sweet pay off.
6- Sort yourselves out and never drop again!

Well, I hope you are right. There's been some new investment in the club recently, what we need is somebody to come in with a bit of vision. Somebody with a long term goal in mind, without that, things could go very badly.

Tait needs to leave NOW!!!

A quality experienced coach could do wonders with the talent our academy produces......

Geordie & Cumbrian, who would you want instead of Tait?

Dean Ryan is after a job?

I'd take Dean Ryan back , need to get a feel good factor back at Kingston.

Marketing has been a joke the last few years. We need to look at other examples of solid marketing from small clubs in the area

£100 season tickets - Hartlepool United trebled there attendence with this offer - we need the numbers!

Friday night fixtures! - How many rugby fans in the north east play on a Saturday? come one RFU use your common sense!

Give the youngsters a shot - if we go down our young ones get invaluble experience if we stay up they'll be the start of a golden generation.

AND SACK ALAN TAIT MAN!

Graham Henry is free....

You could get Brian Ashton,Dave Ellis, Eddie Jones etc.

Also Martin Johnson is on the market for a new job

Brian Smith too.

Looking at those teams, on paper I would have this as a comfortable win for Gloucester, with a potential TBP.

The Cherry and Whites just don't seem to travel well though, and Kingston Park is still a tough place to go and play, despite the Falcons woeful form.

I think this will be a scrappy one and stand by my prediction of Newcastle by less than 7.

Ozzy, we've cracked Sandy Park this season which has similar hurricane conditions even on bright sunny days!

I think Gloucester might find this tough. Falcons will be incredibly physical and Gloucester can't afford to show the lack of committment which has caused them so many problems in recent years away from home.

I'm pretty shocked that they've dropped Trinder and his weels if i'm honest.

I think they've gone for grunt in the midfield with EFS and Tins, although not sure it's the right option.

Time will tell I guess. Is this on ESPN tonight?

Not a clue mate , some northener was meant to be giving me a lift up but let me down

It's not on mate Fleetwood Town vs Yeovil is on.

I'm pretty shocked that they've dropped Trinder and his weels if i'm honest

No Johnny May either. They've gone for the smash it up the middle approach it seems, which is disappointing as they tried too much of that against Tigers last weekend and got nowhere.

Not on the TV as it's FA Cup weekend. Which is a pity I like being able to relax with the gf over dinner and a beer with the rugby on.

The only thing we seem to have this season is physicality....but we are not using it properly...

Get rid of Tait - To be honest i would take any of Dean Ryan (coming back), Deano, Brian Ashton...they cant do much worse than Tait is doing.

I would also get rid of Gopperth...and put Catterick in there....Yes he's young...but at least the boy knows how to pass the ball.....Gopperth must have missed those classes when he was growing up.

I would also get rid of the deadwood foreign journeymen in the squad....its FULL of them!

That's got to be one of the most uninspiring Glos backlines going. It will at least give Gurns a learning experience as he has a whole different set of options outside him.

But seeing Tins, and Voyce there with Lawson and Taylor coming off the bench is worrying. It look like a team that if the forwards dominate could cause problems as they'll retain the ball well. But if Newcastle hold on to the pill then I can't see where the strike moves will come from to snatch points.

yappysnap wrote:That's got to be one of the most uninspiring Glos backlines going. It will at least give Gurns a learning experience as he has a whole different set of options outside him.

I have to completely disagree with you yappy. Lewis, Burns, EFS, Sinbad and Morgan are all fast, creative players who would be part of our most inspiring backline - if you added Trinder and Sharples instead of Tindall & Voyce then everyone would be raving about the backline. Sharples, Trinder and May have both played a lot of rugby, so they have been given a rest. Tindall is far better at OC and will provide a decent foil and option for EFS. Similarly Voyce just brings some added experience, which is what we will need to get a win. Our biggest failing in away games is our game management making the wrong decisions and I think this is why Brush has included Tins & Voyce.

I see Glen Townson has gone to Bristol on loan till the end of the season...

Glaws have been decent on the road recently; a win at Exeter followed by a LBP down at Toulouse. I reckon a possible 5 points is on offer tonight.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves ER - a win will do

I'll be disappointed with anything less mate, that's all.

Big Jim pulling out in the warm up doesn't help!

Morgan scoring within 2 minutes does help though!!

Poopie

Utterly ridiculous opening 10 minutes.

Don't worry if anyone can throw it away its us!

dont suppose anyone has a link they can message me? cant seem to find one anywhere. thanks in advance!

I'd love one too, I think Jeff games are near impossible to find streams for! But if anyone has one, would be grateful for the link.

Ozzy3213 wrote:Looking at those teams, on paper I would have this as a comfortable win for Gloucester, with a potential TBP.

The Cherry and Whites just don't seem to travel well though, and Kingston Park is still a tough place to go and play, despite the Falcons woeful form.

I think this will be a scrappy one and stand by my prediction of Newcastle by less than 7.

That's me one from one so far this weekend then.

Well 1/1 from me (incorrect that is).

Glaws freefall continues. They will be desperate to play their bunny team - Bath.

Ozzy3213 wrote:

Ozzy3213 wrote:Looking at those teams, on paper I would have this as a comfortable win for Gloucester, with a potential TBP.

The Cherry and Whites just don't seem to travel well though, and Kingston Park is still a tough place to go and play, despite the Falcons woeful form.

I think this will be a scrappy one and stand by my prediction of Newcastle by less than 7.

That's me one from one so far this weekend then.

Me too.

Well still think we need to ship half the squad out....but ill take the win...

I feel a little curmudgeonly but I agree. The win doesn't count for an awful lot if it isn't backed up in the following games, things still need to change.

papering over cracks?

yappysnap wrote:papering over cracks?

Falcons or Glaws?

I'm not overly concerned about Glaws at the mo. With the exception of Quins all our loses have been by fine margins and arguably have down to us throwing the game away rather than being outplayed. Very soon things will start to click and we're going to beat a team quite heavily, it is just a question of when. (OK, maybe if!)

The one big saving grace is that Bath are even worse than us

Cherry - did Big Al have a shocker, then?

Yes truly Bath are in the sh*te at the moment.

It pleases me in some ways to see that just getting a rich investor and buying in talent doesn't help so much.

The paper and cracks comment was about Falcons. Would this win and a couple more like it be enough for Tait to keep his job, even if say Wuss go down and Falcons stay up you need new coaching and management blood in there.