Falcons steal home win

By Leipziger
February 18 2008

The Falcons yesterday completed the league double over Saracens for the first time in over six years, but as last season, the victory over the Fez Boyz was hard-won, tight and not without controversy. Toby Flood continued his run of being the only Falcon to score a try on the last four weekends, but dodgy decisions from his team-mates almost cost the team dear.

For the first fifteen minutes of the game, following the announcement of the team minus Jamie Noon and including Ollie Phillips in a reshuffled back line, both teams seemed to be measuring each other up in a midfield scrap.

 

Our first cohesive attack saw Mathew Tait, back in the centre, take a pass in his own half and make a 40m run before being tackled.  The pass to Flood sent his centre partner into the corner, and a last-second pass to Phillips went forward over the line.

 

The Falcons looked the better team in the opening stages, and when Saracens kicked forward from a scrum, full-back Tom May gathered and set up a move involving John Rudd making metres on the left, before the ball was played tight and from a ruck close to the line, the pass missed Andy Long but was picked up by Flood who broke over for the opening score.

 

Jonny Wilkinson’s conversion took the score to 7-0, and further chances materialised when we stole a turnover and kicked forward, and then a clear run for Phillips was ignored.  May looked likely to score just metres out but chipped over two defenders and Saracens touched down themselves, what a waste.

 

Despite a decent enough amount of possession, the ignorance of overlaps and slight hesitations from Flood with the ball in hand weren’t doing the Falcons any favours, although we took a 10-0 lead just after the half hour through a Wilkinson penalty, before Glen Jackson’s kick got the visitors on the scoreboard before the break.

 

Minutes after half-time, Wilkinson stepped up to try a penalty from the half-way line, just to the right, but both direction and legs were missing and the ball dropped into a Saracen’s hands somewhere between eight and 45 metres out (depending on who you listen to).

 

Saracens made their breakthrough just before the hour, a scrum being reset in front of goal and Ben Skirving taking a close ball on the left to charge over the line, two defenders not even attempting to make a tackle.  Ben Woods was then sin-binned for taking out an opponent off the ball and the penalty put us behind for the first time in the game, 10-11.

 

A point down, and with a general feeling around the ground that the game was slipping away from us, there was nobody shouting for Wilkinson to go for the corner or a scrum when a kickable penalty was awarded for offside, and the England fly-half restored the Falcons’ lead, but only for a few minutes before Jackson replied with a highly controversial penalty.

 

In the build-up, Saracens clearly knocked on in a tackle in our 22, before blatant holding on by the outstanding Richard Haughton on the left in front of the referee’s nose.  The home crowd was incensed at this point, and potentially homicidal when in front of goal David Rose gave the visitors a quick penalty.  This does not excuse the noise made during Jackson’s kick, something I for one would not like to see repeated at Kingston Park.

 

But we picked ourselves up and got behind our boys as they attempted to ensure that they were the team ahead at full time, but Saracens kept play tight in quick rucks and brought on the physio at every possible opportunity.

 

But with 78 minutes on the clock, we finally won a penalty which was more than kickable.  Wilkinson stepped up, the ball sailed through the posts, the flags went up and the game was there to be won now!  Just don’t do anything stupid!

 

The Falcons took the ball from the kick-off and had barely 25 seconds to use up.  Once the clock had trickled to zero (those seconds seemed to last longer than the previous ten minutes!), we screamed to the team to get the ball out of play, but the referee blew for an infringement and the match was over!

 

The Falcons are now ninth in the league, with seemingly little hope of the top six, but must keep up this strong home record as a basis for any push into away form, plus a vital European quarter-final to come up in April at KP.  Now, for the small matter of Gloucester at Kingsholm.