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Newcastle’s grim losing streak continues with defeat to Montpellier
By PA
Newcastle’s losing streak continued in the Challenge Cup as they opened their European campaign with a 24-19 defeat to Montpellier at Kingston Park.
The hosts, who have lost each of their first seven Gallagher Premiership matches this season, were 17-0 down early in the second half following tries from Alex Becognee, Ben Lam and Anthony Bouthier.
Newcastle fought back to close the gap to five points with Callum Chick and Iwan Stephens crossing, before Sam Simmonds notched a bonus-point try for the French side in the 63rd minute, with Louis Carbonel converting.
Jamie Blamire notched a third Newcastle try, converted by Louie Johnson, in the 75th minute but Alex Codling’s men were unable to avoid another loss.
Also in Pool 2, Lions began with a win as the South African outfit triumphed 28-12 at Perpignan.
With the match level at 3-3, Lions’ Rabz Maxwane scored what proved the only try of the contest in the ninth minute.
The other 23 points for Lions – who led 16-12 at the interval – came from the boot of Jordan Hendrikse, while Jean-Pascal Barraque kicked all of Perpignan’s points.
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Go to commentsI’m not fully convinced this was any sort of deliberate grand plan by SB, other than perhaps a masterful way (as it transpired) of dealing with injuries to a couple of key players in positions that lack high calibre alternatives in SB’s view. Losing Martin and Lawrence was disruptive to the team England ideally wanted and pretty likely both start if they had been able to. Ted Hill clearly isn’t fully trusted, despite being on the bench vs Scotland and Italy, and Slade may have had his day in light of an winger being drafted in to start as Test centre for the first time. Moving Earl to centre is worthwhile, in the right circumstances, as a proving exercise for future reference but it’s not the way to go against any of the top teams.
So they may well have added another page to their emergency playbook but I’m doubtful it was a genuine attempt at cutting edge innovation. More a case of necessity being the mother of invention that happened to suit the opposition on that given day. I guess we’ll know more in the Autumn but it won’t be until next year in Paris that the first real test of that set up would come against a heavy power team, IF it’s still in use ofc…
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