Opening Night for Falcons
By Leipziger
September 8 2006
This Friday sees the first appearance of the permanent Friday Night Falcons at Kingston Park in a competitive game, as the 2006/07 Premiership hits the North East.
It’s probably not the most inspiring match we could have hoped for to get in a big crowd, however our meeting with
Worcester like ourselves were beaten on the first weekend of the season, however whilst we could have beaten Northampton and lost only 25-23, the Warriors were destroyed 41-11 at Sixways by Bristol, their only points coming from a Phil Murphy try and two Shane Drahm penalties as Bristol ran in five scores.
Worcester bring a decent looking team north as they look to repeat their 16-21 victory at Kingston Park in April 2005, and avoid a repeat of our win against them at home last season, when Matthew Burke inspired the Falcons to a fifth win in six games. The pack boasts strong Welsh international prop Darren Morris and Pat Sanderson in the back row, a top-class star who captained
In the backs, Drahm will be looking to unleash the talented pair of wings Marcel Garvey and Springbok Thinus Delport, as well as Frenchman Thomas Lombard in the centre.
1 Darren Morris
2 Chris Fortey
3 Tevita Taumoepeau
4 Craig Gillies
5 Phil Murphy
6 Pat Sanderson (c)
7 Tom Harding
8 Drew Hickey
9 Matt Powell
10 Shane Drahm
11 Marcel Garvey
12 Simon Whatling
13 Thomas Lombard
14 Thinus Delport
15 Lee Best
Replacements: 16 Chris Horsman, 17 Ben Gotting, 18 Richard Blaze, 19 Kai Horstmann, 20 James Brown, 21 Miguel Avramovic, 22 Mark Tucker
John Fletcher has named Dutch wing/flanker Tim Visser, who scored a hat-trick for the reserves on Sunday, on the bench in what could be a competitive home debut for both of them (definitely for new DoR Fletcher). Ollie Phillips is on the wing to replace the injured Anthony Elliott, and the only other changes are the predictable and frustrating rotation of the hookers and scrum-halves:-
15 Matthew Burke (captain)
14 Tom May
13 Jamie
12 Toby Flood
11 Ollie Phillips
10 Jonny Wilkinson
9 James Grindal
1 Micky Ward
2 Matt Thompson
3 Robbie Morris
4 Andy Perry
5 Andy Buist
6 Brent Wilson
7 Ben Woods
8 Phil Dowson
Replacements: David Wilson, Andy Long, Mike McCarthy, Cory Harris, Hall Charlton, Tim Visser, Joe Shaw.
A win in this game is important as a morale-booster for supporters worried about the size of the squad, for the team and also to ensure we can continue to get in big crowds. After
And finally…
At the Premiership launch a fortnight ago, Mark posed Burkey the question “is there any difference playing Friday nights compared to Saturdays or Sundays?” God’s answer?
“If I was at home, I’d say it’d be better to play on a Saturday afternoon because the suns comes out. Friday nights at home get very wet and sweaty, and the ball gets quite difficult. Here, I don’t think so, I think it’ll be ok. I enjoy playing them [Friday nights] – having played most of my professional career under lights, I’m pretty familiar with it. For people sometimes it can be difficult, for the players [not used to it] especially, sitting around and a bit of boredom sets in. There’s always a good atmosphere at an evening game, and Fridays hopefully will spark us into gear. Hopefully it’ll be of benefit to everyone. If you win your home games, and it’s on Friday night, it sort of becomes a bit of a tradition. Going down to Friday night games at some of these places can be tough, so [we] want to make it not a great experience for teams to come to the North East.”