An early return to action for Newcastle Falcons

Jun 5 2009 by Nick Purewal, The Journal

NEWCASTLE Falcons will start pre-season a month earlier than usual in a bid to bring the new-look squad together in double-quick time.

Steve Bates has called his players back to start the hard fitness work on June 15, where they will be greeted by a fully-refurbished gym at Kingston Park.

The Northumbria University partnership has been put to good use in the stadium fitness facility, which has been refitted with brand new equipment.

England Sevens trio Micky Young, Rob Vickerman and Tom Biggs will be handed extra recovery time after a tough end to the IRB Sevens Series, while Filipo Levi and Josh Afu are competing in the Pacific Nations Cup and Rob Miller is in Japan with England Under-20s.

The majority of Bates’ newly-rebuilt side will be on hand to get down to hard work a week on Monday though, as Bates starts preparations for next term in earnest.

With a new captain in the imposing form of Carl Hayman and eight new signings thus far to integrate into a compact squad, Bates has brought the players back early to steal a march on the vital tasks of integration and team-building.

Bates has almost completed recruitment, but will look to push through a deal for Springbok centre Gcobani Bobo and potentially add another front-rower to the mix.

“We’re returning to pre-season a lot earlier than before this year,” said Bates, “and that’s for a number of reasons but among them is the need to build the new squad into a team as quickly as possible.

“We have a lot of talent, we have recruited a lot of talent too and we are not quite finished in that respect either yet.

“But we felt it was important to bring the players back at this stage and get cracking as soon as we can. This is a new squad of players, lots of changes as we have talked about, and we’re very hopeful that they’ll become a team very quickly.

“A true test of them as a team will be of course how well they do, but also how well they grow.

“We think this will be a strong team for next season, but we think we’ll be stronger the year after, and we’ll add more and we’ll keep improving.

“We’re here to win European cups and Premiership titles, we’re not going to do that next year but we’re making a good step in the right direction.”