Falcons must cut out all the mistakes, says boss
NEWCASTLE Falcons director of rugby Dean Richards said his side must cut out the errors as he reflected on a miserable afternoon at Kingston Park.
Dan Biggar kicked 17 points and steered the five-try Saints to a crushing 44-8 victory.
“It was a disappointing performance from us today, we didn’t do as we had been planning and what we had rehearsed in training,” said Richards (inset right).
“It’s important that we pick ourselves up now as we’ve had a couple of disappointing results in a row now and we need to get ourselves back on the right track and start picking up the wins again.
“Heading into the European break, it might give us a chance to forget about the last couple of league games and to turn our attention to Europe and make a push in that.
“However, I thought we were on top in those opening stages of the game.
“It shows our attacking intent and the way that we want to play when we turn down the opportunity to kick for goal and go for the corner in the early stages of games.
“The first try was somewhat against the run of play, and I think if we had held out a little longer it may have given us more confidence.”
Tom Collins, Courtnall Skosan, Sam Matavesi, George Furbank and Tom James all crossed for tries for Northampton, while George McGuigan burrowed over for Newcastle’s only score.
Northampton boss Chris Boyd hailed Biggar’s performance after the Wales international landed four conversions, two penalties and a drop goal to help his side record a bonus-point win.
The result means Saints are just three points off the Premiership’s top four, and director of rugby Boyd was thrilled with their all-round performance.
“It was a good, solid, all-round performance today from the boys,” he said.
“You come up on the coach and sometimes you get delayed so to come out and take control of the game from the start was good to see. “It’s always nice when players return to a starting line-up or as part of a squad. It empowers them to come together and to see them gelling again. “You can look across the team and you see the quality that we have in positions; Dan (Biggar) has kicked extremely well today and that kind of gives you the platform to play your own game. Tom (Collins) had another strong game for us as well.
“I am extremely pleased to have come here and taken five points; you’d like to take five points from every game, but you know that it isn’t always possible so to do that today is fantastic.
“We haven’t done that very often recently and even less so when we have come up here.”