Premiership’s shortest off-season ends the longest wait as Newcastle Falcons set out to smash expectations

Twenty-seven days will separate Exeter Chiefs’ Premiership final triumph last month and the start of their title defence tomorrow in what is the shortest off-season in the game’s history. For many, there has barely been enough time to catch their breath.

But for Newcastle Falcons, the opening weekend of the 2020/21 season has been a long time coming. The club have not been able to play a competitive game in eight months since the 2019/20 Championship season was halted by the coronavirus pandemic, with the 41-0 demolition of Bedford Blues proving to be their final game in the second tier once the Rugby Football Union scrapped the season and awarded the table-toppers promotion back to the Premiership at the first time of asking.

The months since that game have been long and unproductive. Furlough, positive Covid-19 tests and an enforced training ground shutdown have all become part of what everyday life has been like at Newcastle, as they could only sit and watch as the 12 Premiership clubs returned to action in August to complete the season - the only league in the country allowed to do so.

“It’s been a long time,” said director of rugby Dean Richards, who today selects a competitive matchday squad for the first time in 36 weeks. “it’s a welcome change from all the lockdown, the furlough and the stuff that we’re dealing with on a daily basis with testing and everything else like that.

“You can almost put it to one side and focus, which we haven’t done for a long time, and that’s fantastic.”

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Newcastle return to top-flight action comes against Bath on Saturday afternoon in a lunchtime kick-off against last season’s semi-finalists, and although Bath are missing four players due to England call-ups along with Welsh No 8 Taulupe Faletau, any hope of gaining an advantage has been offset by Newcastle’s own injury problems - something that was compounded this week by the sudden departure of star wing Sinoti Sinoti on Tuesday due to personal reasons. Although fans will remain absent when Newcastle run out at Kingston Park next weekend, the absence of the Samoan international after seven thrilling years will be felt significantly among the club’s loyal followers.

“It is a big blow,” admitted Richards. “For personal reasons Sinoti has had to go back, and it is a shock. It’s disappointing but it happens so often these days and we just wish him all the best.

“He’s been a great servant to us, brought a huge amount of enthusiasm and dynamism in the way that he played and we’ll miss that. But we’ll start looking forward to this weekend and wish him all the best. Such is the guy that he is, he’s been on the club WhatsApp group wishing the players all the best for the season as he’s such a nice guy. He’ll be missed.”

The loss of such a star attraction is a blow to Newcastle’s primary aim this season: to avoid relegation. As for any club that comes up from the Championship, avoiding an immediate return is the be all and end all of the first campaign back in the big time - not least when the second tier faces such an uncertain time with no confirmed start date.

Falling back into the Championship, on the provision there is no ring-fencing of the Premiership clubs, would be catastrophic not just for the Falcons but for rugby in the north-east as a whole. Having been on the cusp of something big after reaching the 2018/19 Premiership play-offs and seeing Newcastle United’s St James’ Park host both European finals as well as a Rugby World Cup warm-up match between England and Italy, the city was in the midst of establishing itself as a rugby union hotspot - something the Falcons have been building for decades. But relegation struck at the worst possible time, as Covid-19 and the premature end of the Championship removed the club from television screens and news headlines for the best part of 18 months.

The club starts the season off as odds-on relegation favourites, with Worcester Warriors and London Irish the next at risk on a list that is fairly generous on 20/1 shot Leicester Tigers. But Richards will not have any talk of being relegation favourites at Kingston Park this season, and as long as injury doesn’t intervene, he believes even without Sinoti Sinoti the club have enough in the tank to survive come May.

“I think you probably would have made us relegation favourites but we don’t think we are at all,” he added. “On paper we’ve got a good enough squad, we just need to get them on the field.

“The build up hasn’t been great, the long lay-off to begin with and a slightly fragmented pre-season because we had a few cases which took 30-odd people out of training (due to close contact) for two weeks. So the whole thing has been fragmented in the approach, but having said that we’re in, we’re training and we’ve got a couple missing but when everybody is back I think on paper we’ve got a very good squad and there’s no way that we feel we deserve the label that we have been given.

“There’s a lot of boys with a huge amount of Premiership experience so it’s almost falling back into the understanding of what it takes to win. A lot of those boys were around when we finished fourth a couple of years ago so I’m not too concerned with that.

“With the experience that I’ve got in the coaching team with Nick Easter coming in and Dave Walder, and Micky (Ward) and Scotty (Macleod) still there, that doesn’t change too much to be honest with you. There’s a really understanding of what it takes to win in the Premiership.”

Richards’ caution over the health of his squad stems from their pre-season double-header against Ealing last week, with the former Championship rivals sharing the spoils as a 38-17 defeat on the road reversed into a 21-12 home win for Newcastle. England flanker Mark Wilson will not feature over the course of the opening weeks due to injury while Cooper Vuna, the Tongan international likely to replace Sinoti Sinoti, is sidelined along with promising wing Morgan Passman.

Richards hopes that the Ealing double-header will help get his side up and running quicker than it took the rest of the Premiership following rugby’s lockdown lay-off though. “Looking at the previous bunch of games it took those boys about three or four games to get into the swing of things so hopefully having had these two warm-up games against Ealing it won’t take us three or four games, maybe just one or two games if not straight into the game this weekend. But we’ll wait and see, the proof will be in the pudding and we’ll see what happens.”

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