Beware the Budgies

Falcons or Budgies?
By Brianc
November 17 2004

This Sunday we welcome Newcastle Falcons to the Madejski stadium. With both teams mid table and both striving for a much valued HC place this is yet another crunch match.

Off field Newcastle have been very successful this season with home gates up a third on last year. On field the picture has been mixed. They won their first two away games of the seaon at Worcester and Bath but have since lost at Gloucester, Wasps and Sale. At home they have narrowly beaten Quins lost to Leicester and drawn with Saracens. Last weekend the y comfortably beat Leeds Tykes 29 – 16 at Kingston Park. After nine games they are one position behind us in the table in seventh and, with 21, have one point less than us.

Last season we met Newcastle three times. On a wet and miserable November day at the Madejski we went down to them 15 – 19. When those of us who went there eventually made it through the snow in February we saw our team ejected from the Powergen Cup courtesy of a 24 – 12 thrashing. Some amends were made in the penultimate game of the season last May when we scraped a 15 – 16 win at Kingston park.

Newcastle’s big star player, Jonny Wilkinson, will not be playing us due to injury. As those of us who suffered watching our cup defeat last year will testify that gives us little comfort. In Dave Walder they have a top class stand in The Newcastle pack, Gareth Archer et all, is a formidable one. It is perhaps in scrums, given our current injury problems and Newcastle’s relative strength, that I feel we will struggle most. Last season I was particularly impressed by the ability of the Newcastle pack to set up and sustain driving mauls. Let’s hope they have lost that knack.

From the standpoint of an amateur statistician with an interest in crowd numbers this will be a good chance to compare like for like with last season. When we played Newcastle on the 23^rd November last year the crowd was 6791. If the growth patterns I published last week hold good we should be looking at a crowd of between 7.5 and 8k.

I find it difficult to say exactly why but I am a tad nervous about this game. Perhaps it is the fact that I saw both our defeats to them last season. Perhaps it’s the fact that my nails have not yet recovered from last Saturdays tussle with Northampton. The bookmakers will probably have us as slight favorites. That being the case, I hope they are right.