By Harvey Allen
Newcastle Falcons forwards coach Micky Ward reflected on ‘tough’ season, ahead of their final game of the season away to Gloucester. The Falcons have one last chance to record a win in the Premiership this season, and play a Gloucester side who were at the receiving end of a crushing 90-0 defeat at the hands of Northampton.
It hasn’t been an easy road for the North-East side, and former prop Micky Ward reviewed the highs and lows for what has been an unfortunate season.
“The first three quarters of the season obviously were tough. It’s a bit of a tough environment, obviously we hadn’t won a game, it was tough, because no matter what you’re doing, if you go into rugby and you’re not winning, obviously it’s tough.
“You’ve got to try and create a good environment and the good thing about here is you’ve got a lot of good lads, even when things were tough in December, January, the lads would still turn up and give you everything all of the time. So, it is tough, but then you come into work and you just have to roll your sleeves up and get on, there’s no point in crying about it, you’ve just got to keep trying and trying and trying.”
Commenting on the arrival of Steve Diamond, he added: “The last couple of months have been good, obviously ‘Diams’ has come in, you’ve seen as much as we haven’t won games, we’ve took three of the top teams in the league very very close.
“We had Leicester, we should have beat Leicester here, we took Sale very very close, last 10-15 minutes we dropped off, and then Bath last weekend, great atmosphere, we had something like 7,500 people here. Last game of the season, the atmosphere was outstanding, the lads bought into it.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get a win, I mean they had something like 250 caps in their team. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many we had, but we didn’t have anywhere near 250, put it that way. So, it has been tough, but we’ve hopefully learnt a few lessons and we’ve got to learn from the experience at the end of the day, haven’t you?”
Looking ahead to the weekend, Newcastle face Gloucester, who recorded the biggest Premiership defeat this year, and also will play in the European Challenge Cup final in London on Friday of next week.
Previewing the game, Ward commented: “Obviously Gloucester had left a couple of players out and they’ve obviously been burnt, but even this weekend, it’s good for us. They’ve got a European final the week after, so they haven’t got anything to play for in the league.
“We’ve got to get stuck into them to the point where they start to look over their shoulder and think ‘I’d probably rather play in that final than I would play against Newcastle’, at home, in the last game of the season: that for them has got nothing riding on it.
“So, it’s great for us. We get down there, nothing to lose, we get stuck into them. They’re looking over their shoulder because they’ve got a European final in a week’s time, and we put a good performance on and we see what happens.”
He continued: “I think we can definitely do it, without a shadow of a doubt. I think we’ve got loads of stuff in our favour. You’ve got guys that aren’t going to be here next year, but guys who are still passionate about the rugby club.
“Newcastle is a good place, I know we haven’t won this year, but it’s a good place. People come here and they enjoy it, we’ve got some good people here and people are disappointed to leave. We want to finish on a high, and the players that are leaving want to finish on a high.
“We’ve just had our last training session of the year, the last training session of some people’s careers at Newcastle Falcons, so we’re going to finish this week on a high, get down there, put in a good performance that we can be proud of, and then hopefully get ourselves a result.”