Richards so cautious as Falcons fly

DEAN Richards knows Newcastle Falcons’ bubble will burst at some point but intends to enjoy their perfect Gallagher Premiership start while it lasts after beating Wasps 27-17 in Coventry.

The Falcons made it three wins from three in their first season back in the English top flight as tries from Adam Radwan, Marco Fuser and Ben Stevenson secured victory at the Ricoh Arena.

Toby Flood also added 12 points from the tee for the newlypromoted side to consign last year’s beaten Premiership finalists to their second consecutive defeat in the league.

The victory means Newcastle sit second in the table, just three points behind champions Exeter - but Richards insists his players are not getting too carried away just yet.

He said: “Full credit to the boys, they are saying with a little bit more accuracy in terms of our exits and fielding high balls in certain areas it would have been a more comfortable win.

“You have to take your hat off to Wasps, they probably butchered a few tries they should have had, and it would have been a closer game - but I thought on the whole we deserved the win.

“We picked up a couple of bumps and bruises and a few boys tired in that second half and we became a little bit disjointed.

“However, I thought they played well and they were committed like they have been over the past three weeks.

“The bubble will burst eventually, we will come a cropper at some stage - but it is all down to aspirations, work rate and working for each other.”

Paolo Odogwu, Tom West and Levi Douglas all scored tries for Wasps but head coach Lee Blackett struggled to take many positives from his side’s performance.

He said: “There are normally a couple of parts of your game when you go ‘at least that was good,’ I think probably aerially and in terms of our kicks, we got quite a few back.

“I think that was really the only positive part of our game.

“Plenty of aspects of our game were off. I felt like we created enough opportunities but our basics just let us down.

“So that was the disappointing part. We gifted them a try as well with an intercept. It is difficult and we are gutted.

“Newcastle’s line speed, especially on the edge, was pretty impressive. They put us under a lot of pressure.”