Falcons’ ace Green has ton to celebrate tonight
CALLUM REACHES CENTURY IN HOME CLASH WITH CHIEFS
CALUM Green becomes a Newcastle Falcons centurion when he plays his 100th game for the club in tonight’s Gallagher Premiership visit of Exeter Chiefs to Kingston Park.
The lock-forward leads the league for line-out takes again this season and packs down in a side showing four changes from the one which won 23-20 at Worcester Warriors last weekend, Tom Arscott making his competitive debut for the Falcons in the 7.45 kick-off.
The experienced winger joined Newcastle in the summer and partners Alex Tait out wide – the other two changes coming in the forward pack.
Adam Brocklebank makes his first Gallagher Premiership start, the 23-year-old England Students loosehead having impressed from the bench in all three of the Falcons’ games this season, while Gary Graham comes into a reshuffled back row in place of Callum Chick.
Newcastle were 28-20 winners on Exeter’s last visit to Kingston Park Stadium, director of rugby Dean Richards saying ahead of tonight’s game: “It is a big challenge for us and that is exciting.
We are at home, we want to get our home account underway for the season and everyone is looking forward to it.”
Respectful of a Chiefs side who top the Gallagher Premiership table with a perfect 15 points from 15, the Falcons’ boss added: “Exeter are incredibly well-drilled, they have been together a long time and they have very little player turnover. That means they know their roles inside out, they execute it every week and that is why they are where they are a consistent top-two side over a number of years.
“They have a superb understanding of how they want to play, they are ruthless in executing it and that makes them very difficult to play against but, as we showed last season up here, they are beatable.
“They have a lot of quality and they all sing off the same hymn sheet – but we also have lot of threat within our own side and they will know they are not in for an easy game against us.” Keen to kick on from last weekend’s win at Sixways, their first there for five years, Richards said: “We were delighted to have won at Worcester because it is not a place where we have done very well in recent years.
“It is great to get one under our belts after all we have shown during our three games this season, barring the first half at Leicester.
“We did not make things easy last weekend by going down to 14 and even 13 men but we showed a lot of character and resolve to hold out.”
Tickets for tonight are available by calling 0871 226 6060.