Rugby
Flood Back For Falcons
27 October 2007
Newcastle Falcons welcome back World Cup finalist Toby Flood to their starting line-up for Saturday’s EDF Energy Cup trip to Gloucester (kick-off 3pm), in a side showing five personnel changes and two positional switches. Flood’s return at fly half sees summer signing Steve Jones shift one place to inside centre for Joe Shaw, who misses the game due to illness.
The season-ending injury to Matthew Burke means in-form winger Tom May must continue his try-scoring streak from fullback as Ollie Phillips comes on to the right wing, while at scrum half Hall Charlton gets a first run-out of the season. In the front row a minor calf problem rules out Jon Golding as All Black Joe McDonnell returns to skipper the side from loose head prop – the only other change to the side coming at tight head where David Wilson takes the place of Micky Ward.
On the bench there could be a Falcons first team debut for England Under-19s fullback Alex Tait, whose elder brother Mathew is not considered for this weekend after playing in every game for England during the Rugby World Cup. Saturday’s game will see the Falcons aim to continue their proud Cup history, having appeared in three Twickenham Cup finals in the past eight years – lifting the trophy on two occasions.
Speaking on the decision to bring Flood straight back in to his starting XV, director of rugby John Fletcher said: “Toby will make a difference to us as he would do to any side, simply because he’s a world class player. That isn’t disrespectful to the other players who have been in there, they are just at a different stage of their development. Coaching is a lot easier when you have top quality players, and Toby certainly falls in to that category. He’s a good kid and he knows what we’ve done for him down the years. He hasn’t played a lot of football this season, and to be honest if he hadn’t been involved with our pre-season campaign I wouldn’t have played him this weekend because he’s only had one training session with the Falcons squad this week. At training yesterday he was shouting England calls and some of our backs were looking at each other totally confused, but he’s getting that out of his system now and he knows what is needed this weekend. Maybe if Mark Mayerhofler and Matt Burke were around this weekend we could have afforded to give Toby a week off, but then to be fair the only reason that Jonny Wilkinson and Mathew Tait aren’t involved this weekend is because they’re carrying slight knocks.”
Revealing the nature of those problems, Fletcher said: “Mat just has a bit of swelling on his knee and is generally a bit sore, but he should be okay to be involved against the Dragons next week hopefully along with Jonny. Both of them will be back in some form of training on Monday. Jonny’s scan came back fine, it was just a whack on his ankle and we don’t anticipate any major problems with it. The physios will give it a fancy name, but basically it’s just a twisted ankle. Taity I would say will definitely be involved next week, and Jonny should be close at this stage.”
Another high profile injury, of course, has been the season-ending knee problem for Aussie fullback Matthew Burke, with Fletcher stating: “It’s desperately disappointing because he was playing well and was in an extremely good frame of mind, enjoying his rugby as much as ever before and continuing to be a big player for us. He is a leader on and off the field, more importantly off, and from that point of view we are still lucky to have him around as enthusiastic as ever. The guy isn’t dead or anything, he’s still here and he’s still very much part of the Falcons family, so that aspect of it continues as before. In fact Matt was at training yesterday with his leg heavily strapped. He can hardly move but he still wanted to be there, and he was handing advice out to the younger players as he will continue to do.”
Asked what the longer term future might hold both for player and club, he added: “I need to sit down and have the conversation with Matt, but ultimately we will do the best thing by the player as we always do. I spoke to him briefly yesterday and said that we’ll have a proper chat next week to see how we move things forward, both from his point of view and also ours. He’s pretty much irreplaceable if you’re totally honest about it, but life does go on. We’ve had other great players here who have either retired or moved on to other clubs, but even at his current age of 34 he is still one of the best fullbacks in the entire world without a doubt and it will be tough to replace him. We have to get on in the meantime because what is certain is that Matt won’t play again this season, so this weekend we have Tom May at fullback who actually spent a lot of the pre-season campaign training in that position, plus we have a few other options as we move forward.”
With one of the mooted choices being Mathew Tait, Fletcher revealed: “I’ve already had that discussion with Taity, and he is one of a number of options at fullback for both club and country now. He is an outside back, which means he can play anywhere from 13 out, but then his younger brother Alex is also an option after playing fullback throughout the England age group system. There are one or two other players in our squad who could make that switch, and then beyond that you’re in to the realms of looking to bring someone in from outside. That is always an option, but what I won’t do is make a panic buy. We look at players every day in all positions from all over the world, that is why we have extensive networks of scouts in both hemispheres. We will now take time to think and assess what our options are, but we are always looking to improve the squad in every position, including fullback.”
With the club having suffered a crippling run of injuries, Fletcher said: “We have had a bad run, which isn’t an excuse but simply a fact when you are without your captain in Phil Dowson, then the likes of Ben Woods, Mark Mayerhofler, Jamie Noon, Andy Buist and a load of others. Clearly that’s not ideal because we don’t have a huge squad in terms of experience, but what it does is give opportunities for some of our exciting young players like Tim Visser and Alex Tait to get a taste of first team rugby, so I look forward to seeing how they respond to that sort of environment.’
Asked why the injury curse has hit his team so hard, Fletcher joked: “They have just happened to coincide with the front page of our programme. On every single occasion this season that our press manager Mark Smith has put a player on the front cover of our programme, that player has gone on to suffer a fairly serious injury in that game. The players are currently in the process of suing him, or at least beating him up quite badly, but in all seriousness I’m not a superstitious person even though a number people have pointed it out. Players though are actually very superstitious as a breed, they’re always looking for something that’s maybe not there. What I have done, however, is have a word with the press man, and for our next home game against Newport I’ve told him he has to put a photo of our old mate Colin Charvis on the front cover!”
Turning to EDF Energy Cup matters this weekend after six weeks of Premiership action, Fletcher said: “I’ll be honest, we looked very tired after the Bath game on Sunday, not necessarily physically but certainly mentally. We started pretty well with three wins from four but have tailed off a bit in our last two, so in terms of where our squad is at right now the break from Premiership action could not have come at a better time. It’s a fresh start, a new competition and over the years we have shown that the Cup format suits us as a club. We’ve done okay in the league, no better than okay, but we’re pleased that we now have a new tournament to get stuck in to and the exciting prospect of going down to Gloucester. It’s a totally different mindset when you play in these knock-out type competitions or ones with small groups like we have in the EDF Energy Cup, especially when people on the outside maybe don’t expect you to get anything from the game. That’s a situation that suits us, because there’s no pressure, we’ll just roll our sleeves up and give it a massive go. Gloucester will put a team out with considerable strength considering how many internationals they have in their squad, and they will have a boat load of internationals out no matter what side they select on the day. At this moment in time they are undoubtedly the best team in England, but last season I thought we were pretty unfortunate to lose down there and we go in to the game ready to give it a huge effort. I’ll be honest, I fancy us to go down there and beat them, but admittedly I am a bit biased. What is for certain is that we go down there massively fired up, determined to win a good share of the ball and I think we will have opportunities to score. Clearly we have to defend better than we did against Bath at the weekend, but after the week we’ve had in training I would back us against anyone. We’ve taken a look at our defensive system this week and made some changes, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.”
Newcastle Falcons team to face Gloucester:
15 Tom May
14 Ollie Phillips
13 Tim Visser
12 Steve Jones
11 John Rudd
10 Toby Flood
9 Hall Charlton
1 Joe McDonnell (captain)
2 Matt Thompson
3 David Wilson
4 Andy Perry
5 Mark Sorenson
6 Geoff Parling
7 Brent Wilson
8 Russell Winter
Replacements:
16 Andy Long
17 Micky Ward
18 Jason Oakes
19 Ed Williamson
20 James Grindal
21 Alex Tait
22 Adam Dehaty
Not considered due to injury: Andy Buist (shoulder), Ben Woods (hand), Ross Beattie (shoulder), Phil Dowson (shoulder), Jonny Wilkinson (ankle), Mathew Tait (knee) Jamie Noon (knee), James Hoyle (hip), Mark Mayerhofler (shoulder), Matthew Burke (knee), Joe Shaw (illness), Jon Golding (calf), Lee Dickson (arm).
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