Sale v Newcastle Friday 7.45

[fivepointer]

SALE

15. Joe Carpenter, 14. Tom Roebuck, 13. Will Addison, 12. Sam Bedlow, 11. Arron Reed, 10. Rob du Preez, 9. Gus Warr; 1. Si McIntyre, 2. Luke Cowan-Dickie, 3. James Harper, 4. Ben Bamber, 5. Hyron Andrews, 6. Ernst van Rhyn, 7. Ben Curry ©, 8. Tom Curry.

Replacements:

16. Ethan Caine, 17. Tumy Onasanya, 18. Asher Opoku-Fordjour, 19. Josh Beaumont, 20. Dan du Preez, 21. Nye Thomas, 22. Tom Curtis, 23. Sam Dugdale.

NEWCASTLE

15 Elliott Obatoyinbo, 14 Adam Radwan, 13 Oli Spencer, 12 Cameron Hutchison, 11 Ben Stevenson, 10 Ethan Grayson, 9 Sam Stuart; 1 Adam Brocklebank, 2 Jamie Blamire, 3 Richard Palframan, 4 Pedro Rubiolo, 5 John Hawkins, 6 Philip van der Walt, 7 Tom Gordon, 8 Callum Chick (captain).

Replacements: 16 Ollie Fletcher, 17 Luan de Bruin, 18 Murray McCallum, 19 Freddie Lockwood, 20 Adam Scott, 21 Joe Davis, 22 Jack Metcalf, 23 Louis Brown.

[Puja]

Double Curry straight back into the team and AOF being taken out of the firing line for a week - good news for England.

Puja

[Puja]

Not an enthralling game. I only watched the first 30 minutes or so, as I got bored of the one-way traffic after the fourth try. Newcastle just had nothing in attack - they had a solid period of 6-7 minutes of possession in and around Sale's 22 near the start of the game and didn't even look close to worrying the Sale defence, let alone making a linebreak or scoring a try. Probably went through about 20-30 phases across several periods of play without doing more than providing tackling practice.

Puja

[fivepointer]

Pretty grim stuff.
Newcastle not competitive. There's no lack of effort but defensively they are soft and in attack they offer nothing. Getting a single win this season might be beyond them unless they improve dramatically.

[twitchy]

It's one of those seasons where it's not worth tuning into any newcastle games.

[Epaminondas Pules]

It's one of those seasons where it's not worth tuning into any newcastle games.

I only watch them to see how the youngsters are going. Last night was Joe Davis, who looked good again and Ollie Spencer who was a real mixed bag. No Redshaw sadly. But otherwise they’re a very hard watch.

[FKAS]

A lot of injuries for Falcons currently. I'm not sold that Grayson is a flyhalf, I think there'll be a dramatic uptick when Wilkinson returns from injury and adds some nous at 10. The midfield was makeshift last night as well.

I think there's more to come from Falcons but it ain't going to come quickly so there might be some ugly results first.