Where to start? Yes, the champions are struggling with that age-old conundrum that never seemed to bother them in the old days – a defence of their title. But Newcastle. Some people are starting to notice them these days. Leicester played here as if they had not. This 40-point drubbing was the result, the Tigers’ heaviest defeat to the Falcons.
If people are waking up to Newcastle, the loudest noises are being made by the little dynamo on their left wing, another of the latest wave of Argentinians to wreak havoc on rugby’s world order. Mateo Carreras cannot yet call himself an established Puma but the 23-year-old is tearing the Premiership apart this season.
This time he added a first-half hat-trick to his season’s tally to take a lead in the try-scoring charts. The resultant bonus-point win in this tightest of seasons, even by Premiership standards, catapulted the Falcons from last-but-one on points difference to just five points off the playoffs – and three shy of the champions themselves.
Leicester claimed a bonus point of their own with a try at the death, thickening their cushion over Newcastle in mid-table from the two that had seemed likely, but they will consider that extra point of scant consolation. This is the second week in a row they have journeyed north and conceded 40 points, after last weekend’s thrashing at Sale. With Steve Borthwick and Kevin Sinfield whisked away so suddenly by England, Richard Wigglesworth, their interim coach, finds himself with quite the task on his hands.
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Dave Walder, himself in only his first season as head coach, is building a team of flexible, hard footballers in the windswept north-east. Tempting though it is to lavish praise on Carreras, this is far from a one-man show. Less than a month ago, Newcastle allowed George McGuigan to join Gloucester, so up stepped another England hooker, Jamie Blamire, to turn in a superb performance, scoring a try of his own, the fifth of the Falcons’ six. They dominated the scrum and boasted a back five of the pack who were constantly in Leicester faces with or without the ball.
Carreras’s first was a relatively simple run-in in the first quarter, worked clear by slick handling and carrying, the exemplary captain, Tom Penny, putting him away after great work by Brett Connon, so sharp at fly-half, and Greg Peterson, so hulking in the second row. As roll-calls of key performers go, it was an apt vignette.
A minute later, Carreras was off again, chipping and chasing and coaxing Freddie Steward into a body check that earned him a yellow card. It could have been a penalty try. A few minutes later again, Carreras performed the same trick. The bounce of the ball denied him another try then, but from the position secured, Callum Chick barged over for Newcastle’s second.
Ben Youngs replied for Leicester, also down the left wing, where the admirable Ollie Chessum had a gallop, but the only left winger in town was Carreras. In the next five minutes he had claimed his hat-trick, Blamire dummying and breaking, before Connon did the same to send him over for his second, then running in an interception from his own 22 in the next play for his third.
That earned Newcastle a 28-5 lead. Chessum charged powerfully to score Leicester’s second early in the second half, but Blamire’s try just short of the hour put an end to any idle thoughts of a Tigers comeback. In the last 10 minutes, Jimmy Gopperth, such a legend in these parts, and Sean Jansen scored for Leicester to bring up that bonus point, either side of Newcastle’s sixth, a soft stroll by Matías Moroni, another Puma, through the Tigers’ defence.
That other defence, the one of their title, seems even more at sea. But, for all the tribulations off the field, this is a golden era for the Premiership on it. Newcastle’s form is no more than the most recent exhibit of that.
