Rugby Union: Cherries ripe for rampant revival

IT MAY have been the public address announcer's idea of a joke or, just as likely, a perfectly innocent Freudian slip of Gloucester Cathedral proportions, but the man on the Kingsholm microphone certainly hit the nail squarely on the head when he mis-introduced Va'aiga Tuigamala as "Viagra" Tuigamala. Poor old Inga must have been as stiff as a board yesterday morning after spending 80 exhausting and utterly bewildering minutes chasing Cherry and White shadows along the highways and byways of the West Country.

As a former All Black and rugby league international of long standing and world renown, Tuigamala had been virtually everywhere and seen pretty much everything. Until, that is, he arrived at Kingsholm on Saturday to find a Gloucester back division in a state of creative ecstasy. He could scarcely have been more disoriented had he caught Bill Clinton with his trousers up.

Gloucester backs are not generally described as "shadows". Steamrollers, yes. Sherman tanks, definitely. But shadows? Put a local threequarter in a square metre of Cotswold space and he usually becomes agoraphobic. On Saturday, though, Chris Catling and company consigned their inhibitions to the closet and performed with sufficient abandon to put five quite glorious tries past the disbelieving champions.

Each one of those tries was a minor masterpiece, both in terms of conception and execution. But then, it was a minor masterpiece of a contest, to which Newcastle contributed handsomely. "One of the best games I've ever seen," pronounced Richard Hill as he basked in the afterglow of a breathless afternoon's entertainment, and if the Gloucester coach had been charged with gilding the lily, he would have been convicted only by a majority verdict.

Catling, an England A full-back last season, is quite some player; brave to the point of stupidity - Hill's description - under the high ball and stiletto-sharp on the counter, he is also the star pupil at the recently founded Kingsholm Academy of Finishing (headmaster and lecturer-in-chief: Philippe Saint-Andre). If the first of his three tries was perfection itself - thunderous driving from Nathan Carter and Chris Fortey, ruthless rucking from the rest of the pack and a weighted cut-out pass from Terry Fanolua to wrong-foot the Falcons' defensive remnants - the others had very nearly as much going for them.

"He'll get a few headlines for that display and he deserves them," admitted Newcastle's Rob Andrew, who has come across one or two good 'uns in his time and was sufficiently gracious in defeat to add Catling to the list. "He's dangerous, no doubt about it. As far as his international future goes, it's all about maintaining the momentum, isn't it? If he can keep doing the business, people will keep talking about him. And if you're being talked about, you're on the right road."

Yet, brilliantly as Catling played, the man of the match plaudits went to the Gloucester dug-out. Given the trials and tribulations of a turbulent week behind the scenes, it was quite possibly Hill's finest moment as a Premiership coach. Not only did the former England captain coax the best from a largely home-grown pack deflated by the transfer-listing of one of their own, Phil Greening, he also had the courage to experiment both with a new half-back partnership and an entirely fresh and radical tactical approach.

When four full internationals are missing for one reason or another it takes a bold selector to drop a fifth, Scott Benton, into the bargain. But it was the demoted England scrum-half's replacement who put the firelighter to the touchpaper. Ian Sanders, one of Hill's successors in the Bath No 9 shirt before making the short hop up the M5 to Kingsholm, did the older Recreation Ground old boy proud with his fast, unfussy and precise passing from set-piece and breakdown. Thanks to his service and the distributive skills of the excellent Simon Mannix outside him, the Gloucester threequarters saw a whole new world open up before their eyes.

"It wasn't an easy call, bringing Ian in over Scott," admitted Hill. "But the top teams spend a lot of time in front of the video these days and I think it's fair to say that they've worked Scott out a little. We'd been a little stodgy, a little on the static side, for weeks and I wanted to ask some fresh questions of the opposition. There was a complete change of plan and it was based around a scrum-half who would simply get the ball away from the contested areas. As it turned out, Ian was spot on."

In time-honoured managerial fashion, however, Hill was not getting carried away. "Let's face it, we're talking about the first really good performance in seven games," he pointed out. And had Newcastle not shipped 18 points in as many minutes at the start of the second half, they would surely have rendered the Gloucester improvement null and void. "We made the mistake of playing too deep," groaned Andrew, as responsible as anyone.

For all that, the holders remain a going concern. Good enough to score four contrasting tries in an intimidating arena, they still possess Europe's finest all-purpose line-out forward in Doddie Weir and enough hired muscle to put the frighteners on all but the most resilient rivals. "This is a tough, tough Premiership and no one is going to go 12 or 13 games unbeaten as we did last season," said Andrew. "You have to knock off your home games and then see how many you can sneak on the road. It will be tight, I promise you."

Gloucester: Tries Catling 3, Saint-Andre, Lumsden; Conversions Mannix 2; Penalties Mannix 4. Newcastle: Tries Walton, Weir, Naylor, Wilkinson; Conversions Wilkinson 3; Penalties Wilkinson 2.

Gloucester: C Catling; A Lumsden, T Fanolua, R Tombs, P Saint-Andre; S Mannix, I Sanders; T Woodman, C Fortey, A Deacon, M Cornwell, D Sims (capt), E Pearce, S Ojomoh, N Carter.

Newcastle: P Massey; J Naylor, V Tuigamala, R Andrew, T Underwood; J Wilkinson, G Armstrong; N Popplewell (G Graham, 45), R Nesdale, I Peel, R Beattie (G Archer, 63), G Weir, P Walton, D Ryan (capt), R Arnold (S O'Neill, 56).

Referee: S Lander (Liverpool).