'I'm very disappointed' - Bottom dwelling Gloucester rue leaving Kingston Park empty handed

Gloucester boss George Skivington feels his side lacks a killing instinct after a 22-10 loss at Newcastle left them rooted to the bottom of the Premiership table.

Tries from Adam Radwan and Matias Orlando put the in-form Falcons in control early on, before Jonny May scored his first Gloucester try since returning to the club in reply.

Gloucester huffed and puffed in the second half but Newcastle pulled clear late on through a Brett Connon penalty and last-gasp George McGuigan try to deny their opponents a bonus point.

Skivington believes the Cherry and Whites should have taken something from the match, though, and rued their inability to make the most of their opportunities.

“I’m very disappointed with the result as I thought that we could and should have taken the points. It’s more disappointing to have not even come away with a bonus point,” the Gloucester head coach said.

“There are elements of our performance that I’m happy with as we have large chunks of territory during the game but unfortunately we’ve not been able to convert them into the points.

“We had a strong spell of 20 minutes at the start of the second half, where we could have got level or gone ahead so it’s disappointing not to have done that. Some of our performances have merited points but we’ve not got them and today was one of them.

“Credit has to be given to Newcastle though; they are a very gritty team that hang in there in games and today they took their chances when they came along.”

Newcastle’s impressive return to the top tier continued with a fifth win from six games to move into the top four, even though they were far from their best at a freezing Kingston Park.

The Falcons looked set for a comfortable win when Radwan sprinted the length of the field to score and Orlando broke through from close range.

But Gloucester worked their way back into the game before Newcastle found enough to see them off.

“They (Gloucester) are a far better side than the table suggest and so we knew it was going to be difficult,” said Newcastle director of rugby Dean Richards.

“The pleasing thing is we did deny them the bonus point which is what we really wanted to do. At the same time we didn’t get the bonus point that we wanted at the same time.

“Gloucester had that spell in the second half, which they probably should have taken a little bit more from it than they actually do but then after that I thought we controlled the game for the final 20 minutes.

“Our discipline has been tremendous all season but today it just seemed to be a little bit off from the first penalty. Today, the contact area was refereed differently to what we’ve experienced all season. There were too many penalties given away.”