Ask any common watcher of the Gallagher Premiership to espouse its qualities, and the phrase “aggressive” will nearly actually come up.
Final season’s last desk illustrated this: Leicester Tigers completed eighth, and solely misplaced two fewer video games than runners-up Tub. Fifth-placed Bristol scored extra factors, and conceded fewer, than champions Northampton. Going into the ultimate spherical of the common season, seven groups all had an opportunity of profitable the title.
A wage cap system, designed to make sure fairness throughout the board, means anybody ought to have the ability to beat anybody on their day.
Nonetheless, for a lot of the previous two years, Newcastle’s 25-game dropping streak threatened to undermine the Premiership’s USP.
How can a league boast of being fiercely fought and uber-competitive if one membership are simply making up the numbers?
In a 10-team league, with solely 5 matches per weekend, can the Premiership afford for a type of video games to be a foregone conclusion?
With this in thoughts, Newcastle’s stirring 24-18 victory over Exeter was not solely big for the membership and rugby union within the north-east of England, however for the very essence of the league itself.
Newcastle’s win was as widespread because it was long-awaited, extensively welcomed by followers and pundits alike. Even our colleagues from BBC Radio Devon – who might have understandably targeted on the Chiefs’ worrying begin to the season – paid tribute to Newcastle at first on the last whistle.
With the smallest price range within the division, Falcons boss Steve Diamond wants his group to be confrontational and canny.
Sammy Arnold’s try-making first-half deal with and Ethan Grayson’s late drop-goal had been nice examples of this.
“We’re attempting to construct one thing – it is taking time, however the job in hand is to placed on performances like that at residence,” mentioned Diamond, who offered one of many pictures of the weekend as he chatted casually to an Exeter fan throughout the nervous last phases.
With Diamond declaring the “monkey is off the again”, the problem now could be for the Falcons to take some extra scalps.
However with the league shutting down over November for the autumn internationals, they should wait a full six weeks to have one other crack at Kingston Park.
