Of course this season is not over and done with yet and we won’t give up while there is still a mathematical chance of us staying up.
Hopefully, this can give us extra confidence going into the game with Exeter a week on Saturday and it is obviously crucial we win again.
We have to win our last two home games and, although we have two very difficult away games at Bath and Saracens, we’ll be doing our very best to win those too. If not, losing bonus points could be crucial too.
On top of that, we have to throw in the fact we need Newcastle to lose every game too, so there is still a lot in the balance, but we will give it our best shot and see what happens.
Obviously the big thing was to actually get the win up at Newcastle on Sunday as it has been a big struggle this year and no-one likes losing every week.
We were, of course, pleased to get the win but, ironically, it was probably one of our worst performances of the last five or six weeks, but we will take it.
It was an odd atmosphere in the dressing room afterwards because we have played far better than that over the last six weeks, but there was a sense of relief to just get the win.
(Director of rugby) Dean (Ryan) spoke at the end and just said ‘it was messy, it wasn’t great, but a win’s a win, so who cares’. We have tried so hard to get a win all season, so we were happy to take it.
It has been difficult circumstances for us this year but, as a group, we’ve remained tight. In the past with other teams, we’ve been through bad spells and there has been all sorts of in-house problems, but we haven’t had any of that.
The pleasing thing was the way we stuck to process in the last 10 to 15 minutes of the game and didn’t panic or focus on what might happen or the scoreboard – we just stuck to our plan and managed to nail it.
I think all of the subs made a really big impact, especially Ed Shervington, at hooker, as our scrum was creaking at one point but he came on and did really well. The impact of our replacements was probably what won us the game.
I felt we looked really threatening in the second quarter of the game – our back three in particular on kick returns caused problems for Newcastle – and I was disappointed we weren’t able to get a score in that period.
I think the Falcons went through a lot of phases, but didn’t really trouble our defence too much, whereas we did look threatening when we were on the attack.
I always felt that we could sneak a try at some point and, thankfully, we were able to get it at the end.
There was no doubt our discipline was poor, but a lot of the penalties we conceded weren’t stupid ones, they were 50-50 calls that kept going against us.
That is the difference with us now though, as we have sometimes this season been guilty of giving away daft penalties, but you have to live life on the edge and sometimes things go for you and, at other times, they go against you.
That was disappointing against Newcastle, but the pleasing thing is that it was what it was and we still managed to nail the win in the last 10 minutes.
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