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Winless Newcastle hoping ill wind will foil struggling French giants
By Chris Jones
Winless Newcastle Falcons cannot compete with Montpellier’s playing budget or high-profile squad and will need to call upon the North East’s bitter winter weather to level the playing field when the teams clash in the European Challenge Cup at Kingston Park this weekend.
That’s the verdict of Falcons forwards coach Micky Ward who wears shorts even in the coldest months and fully understands the impact the cold wind blowing in from the North Sea can have on opponents. Add to the equation the fact that Montpellier have brought in a new coaching team this season under Bernard Laporte -sacking England’s Richard Cockerill in the process – and are on their own eight-game losing run and there are reasons to believe the Falcons can register their first victory of the season after eight defeats in the Premiership. Newcastle have enjoyed success in a previous meeting with Montpellier at Kingston Park, winning a Champions Cup clash 23-20 in 2018.
Montpellier, who started the season registering an opening win over back-to-back European champions La Rochelle, have a squad that includes former Exeter Chiefs Sam Simmonds and Harry Williams along with Paolo Garbisi, of Italy, South African World Cup winner Cobus Reinach, Wales prop Henry Thomas and a number of French internationals headed by lock Paul Willemse.
Patently, both teams are in need of a confidence boost and Ward said: “It is beautiful across in France but we have temperatures of 2C, sleet coming down and it’s freezing cold. You have to use everything you can when you are playing teams like this. Hopefully, it will be cold and nice and wet on match day.
“When you get into a habit of losing then it becomes acceptable and we have said for a couple of weeks that once we get that first win the second and third will come off that. Hopefully, this match will be the springboard and get that momentum. That’s what we are hoping for. We beat them in the Champions Cup and so we know we have turned them over at home before.
“Montpellier have an outstanding squad but haven’t had it all their own way this season with a poor start. Cockers (Cockerill) is a good bloke but he has been given the bullet and they have brought other people in. We don’t know if they are going to come with all their big guns and try and get their own momentum but we have a rough idea of the mentality they will come with in this transition period.
“It is a tough start to the season with 21 weeks on the bounce without a break and it is nice to freshen things up with Montpellier at home and then we travel to South Africa to face the Lions and that means we can try a few different things including going to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland for a training session this week. We do things as a group, getting off-site to do different things so it’s not the same every week. We had to get vaccinations and got through passport control to get to Sunderland and it was a bit interesting for Phil Brantingham, our prop, who is a hardcore Newcastle United season ticket holder and struggled a bit .”
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The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
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