Newcastle lament missed opportunities as Saracens and Farrell assert control
NEWCASTLE director of rugby Dean Richards bemoaned his side’s inability to take their chances as they went down to a 26-12 defeat at the hands of Saracens at Allianz Park.
The defeat kept them rooted to the bottom of the Premiership with four games to go and they remain three points behind 11th-placed Worcester.
Tane Takulua kicked four penalties for Newcastle but it was not enough to secure a bonus point as they failed to take advantage of their first-half dominance.
Richards said: ‘We had three clear-cut try-scoring chances in 60 minutes and took none, they had three and took all of them.
‘Our scrum was dominant for 50 minutes and our lineout functioned really well.’
When Takulua kicked his fourth penalty, three minutes from time, Newcastle looked to have earned a deserved bonus point but a disputed lastminute try from Alex Lozowski took that away.
Prior to Lozowski’s finish, Saracens’ wing Alex Lewington appeared to have put a foot in touch but after lengthy discussions with the TMO, the try stood.
Richards said: ‘I don’t know it whether it was a try or not but I have to question why we were given such an inexperienced set of officials as we are not getting the bounce of the ball, which we need in our present position.’
Next up for Newcastle is a home against fellow strugglers Leicester next Friday evening.
Sean Maitland, Max Malins, Lozowski and Nick Tompkins scored tries for Saracens with Owen Farrell adding three conversions but Saracens’ director of rugby Mark McCall accepted it was an unconvincing performance.
He said: ‘In the first half, we made a lot of mistakes and our execution was poor. Our handling errors were huge but fortunately our defence was very good.’
Meanwhile, Bath have eased concern over Joe Cokanasiga’s fitness after the England wing was forced off at half-time of their 26-19 Premiership victory over Bristol.
Cokanasiga hurt his shoulder in the act of scoring the third of his team’s four tries and, although he initially played on, he was in obvious pain, with an interval medical check ending his afternoon at Twickenham.
The bulldozing Fijian-born England star is on course to be a member of Eddie Jones’ World Cup squad after starring against Italy in the recent Six Nations.
‘Joe took a good whack on the AC joint. It’s just very sore,’ director of rugby Todd Blackadder said.
Jonathan Joseph was the star as Bath made a storming start in front of a 60,152 crowd at Twickenham, but a dreadful penalty count that read 8-0 against helped Bristol back into the game.
‘I thought the club put on an amazing occasion and it was just really nice to back that up with a good performance,’ Blackadder said.
‘We put Bristol under early pressure and got points off the back of that. I was really pleased with that.’