Newcastle Falcons are flying into the start of the 2018-19 campaign after their best season in 20 years.
A host of top-class signings have been added to the core of the squad which saw the Falcons recording their highest league finish since they last won the Premiership title back in 1998, Newcastle retaining the best of their existing talent as they look to kick on from a breakthrough year.
Taking the helm once again after agreeing a new three-year deal to remain with the club is former England captain Dean Richards, whose stewardship during 2017-18 saw him claiming the Premiership’s Director of Rugby of the Season Award.
The Falcons’ Gallagher Premiership mission gets underway on Sunday September 2 when champions Saracens visit Kingston Park Stadium, the venue at which Newcastle went unbeaten for five and a half months last season during a hot streak which lasted from November until the final home game of the season in May.
For the first time in 14 years the club will play in Europe’s elite club competition, the Heineken Champions Cup – a fitting accomplishment in the season that Newcastle’s St James’ Park hosts the European club finals on the weekend of May 10- 11, 2019.
A mouth-watering draw sees the Falcons pooled with French giants Toulon and Montpellier, and there is the added bonus of home-and-away clashes against their nearest professional rugby neighbours, Edinburgh.
The Falcons only missed out on a European final last season when they were defeated by Gloucester in the semi-finals of the European Challenge Cup, the 2017-18 campaign delivering a trio of major semi-finals as they also reached the last four in the Premiership and Anglo-Welsh Cup.
It was a campaign which saw home crowds increasing by even more rapid rates, thanks in no small part to the all-time club record attendance of 30,174 for the club’s first ever game at St James’ Park. Even removing that game from the statistics there was still an average home attendance increase of 12% on the previous season, Kingston Park’s sold-out signs going up for the first time in more than nine years as the Falcons’ nest was full to its 10,100 capacity on two separate occasions.
The elusive running of Vereniki Goneva saw the Fijian wizard win Premiership Player of the Season and sitting joint top of the try-scorer charts, while Samoan wing partner Sinoti Sinoti claimed the Premiership’s Try of the Season award for his dazzling solo effort against finalists Exeter Chiefs.
Both players have committed their futures to the Falcons with newly-extended deals, Goneva spending the summer helping a rapidly-improving Fiji team to their fourth successive Pacific Nations Cup title. Club-mate Mark Wilson featured for England during their June tour to South Africa, while centre Chris Harris continued his emergence as part of the Scotland squad which claimed the notable scalp of Argentina away from home.
All of which continues to increase Newcastle Falcons’ momentum going into the 2018-19 season, their prospects enhanced by an ambitious recruitment process which has seen the arrival of Samoa and Leicester prop Logovi’i Mulipola, Fiji No 8 Nemani Nagusa, Leicester hooker George McGuigan and highly-rated London Irish centre Johnny Williams.
Augmenting the new faces are a host of England Under-18s stars who have been promoted from the Falcons’ prolific academy, with Morgan Passman, Will Montgomery, Cameron Nordli-Kelemeti, Tom Marshall, Josh Hodge and Rob Farrar all handed fulltime contracts.
It is little wonder, therefore, that the region’s only representatives enter the campaign with great expectations.
A stable core with added impetus from outside ‘Newcastle Falcons’ rise shows all the signs of continuing during 2018-19.
