Steve Bates: Win will set Falcons up for next season
Apr 16 2010 by Nick Purewal, The Journal
STEVE Bates believes Newcastle Falcons have made far more progress this season than their lowly Guinness Premiership position suggests.
Freely admitting that his side has not fulfilled planned and expected potential, Falcons rugby director Bates has backed his men to plot the right course for next term – starting this weekend against Leicester Tigers.
Sunday’s Kingston Park clash (kick-off 3pm) marks Bates’ 50th Premiership contest at the Falcons helm – and in the 49 to date his record stands as won 15, drawn five and lost 29.
Sitting ninth with three games left to play, the Falcons must still safeguard their top-flight status by grabbing one more victory.
After winding up 10th last term despite a rousing second half to the season, Bates and his rehashed squad targeted a top-six finish and Heineken Cup rugby for next term.
But once again results have proved elusive, and as Falcons assistant boss Alan Tait pointed out, there’s no prize for second place.
Several victories proved tantalisingly close, and former Borders boss Bates believes his side have in fact pushed closer to their pre-season goals than the league table would show. “Were we to have finished sixth this term and finished ahead of the likes of Harlequins, Bath and Gloucester,” Bates explained.
“Then I think everyone would have been saying what a fantastic achievement that would have been.
“Of course that’s what we wanted to do, and had we had a bit more luck and things gone slightly differently I think that would have been the case.
“Now we have come pretty close to managing to get into that top half, and it’s only very small margins that have stopped us from making that happen.
“So while we are down at the wrong end of the table, we didn’t need too much to go differently for us to hit our goals.
“But the fact we haven’t managed that is not disastrous and we have to keep striving to improve as much as we can.
“We’ll improve for next season, but so will everyone so at this stage it’s tough to predict how far that improvement will take us.
“I started this 14 years ago with the club, and then left to go to Scotland for what was a really enjoyable challenge.
“And since I have been back at the club I have relished the opportunity to keep battling to make this club a force in this league.
“I would say that we have made progress, in that we have given the squad and the team a greater balance of tactical armoury, so we can take teams on in all areas of the game.
“But we haven’t been as consistent as we would have liked, and we have not managed to reach our potential for this season.”
Calling on his men to set themselves up for next season with a stirring close of this campaign, Bates said victory over Leicester would be a great place to start.
“The challenge now is to finish this term on a high with a few wins,” he continued, “firstly to stave off completely the threat of relegation, and secondly to ensure we can go into the new campaign full of confidence to move our game forward.
“We cannot get away from the fact that there are a number of talented and very experienced players leaving in the summer, and it’s up to us to replace them with the very best that we can, in order to take us forward and keep the side progressing.
“I think certainly the young players will have learned a great deal from this campaign, and there’s no doubt they will all be better players for their experience.
“Whether as a group the experience will improve the players for next season remains to be seen, because just as we are striving to hit the top six, so are a whole host of quality and talented sides.”
