WASPS .............................................. 41 Falcons recover from false start to steal win in see-saw thriller

NEWCASTLE won a high-scoring Anglo-Welsh Cup tie against Wasps, edging a 14-try thriller 53-41.

The Falcons scored eight tries to Wasps’ six with Adam Radwan and Simon Uzokwe both going over twice for the visitors at the Ricoh Arena.

Santiago Socino, Gary Graham, Joel Hodgson and Andrew Davidson got the other Falcons tries. And Falcons academy coach James Ponton was thrilled to see his young side match Wasps’ attacking intent.

“We’re very pleased with the win, it was a big focus of ours to come here and come away with a win,” he said.

“Our performance was part of that, though I’m not sure we got the full package but we’ll take that.

“We knew they would be running the ball a lot and we identified that and they can play from all areas of the field.

“But we’ve got some youngsters who have got a very attacking threat and we knew we could come here and match that.

“We were on the back foot a little bit in the first 10-15 minutes and Andrew Davidson of Newcastle avoids a tackle from Juan de Jongh to score they went a couple of tries up but we steadied the ship and started to play some better rugby.”

After an early Falcons penalty from Craig Willis, two tries within two minutes gave the hosts the advantage in a frantic opening period.

First, Jack Willis went under the posts, with Rob Miller adding the conversion. Two minutes later, the home side’s attack saw the Falcons caught cold with debutant Aaron O’Sullivan the spare man to go over in the corner.

In the 19th minute, the home side added a third try when a break from Brendan Macken saw him offload to Owain James, whose pace saw him sneak over to stretch the lead to