As Newcastle Falcons embark on their annual scrap to preserve Premiership rugby, Chris Pilgrim tells MARK SMITH why the scars from previous skirmishes will serve them well
THE wind of change blowing through Kingston Park is touching not only the personnel following Gary Gold’s arrival, but also the culture and mindset.
That much is in evidence as Chris Pilgrim arrives for his 11.30am interview at 11.25, leather folder clasped firmly in hand. Mark Wilson is next up at 11.45am and walks up the East Stand stairs with five minutes to spare, a thick tome in his paw with ‘Newcastle Falcons Player Handbook’ emblazoned across the front.
“This is how it is nowadays,” says Pilgrim with a smile – ready for business.
A thinking man’s rugby player, the 26-year-old scrum-half sees media duty not as an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs, but as an opportunity to engage and put his point across to a wider audience.
He even expunges an old myth while he is at it, bringing up the fact that the reporter in front of him had given him five out of ten in Saturday’s 19-10 win over London Irish, rubbing salt into the wound by criticising his speed of delivery from the base of the ruck.
“Your report said my service was too slow, so I will have to sharpen up on that for you this weekend,” he says, with no hint of a tantrum. Players, of course, never read the papers, so we are told.
“Of course I read them,” admits Pilgrim. “I know players say they never do, but most of them are lying!”
That cleared up, talk turns to the Falcons’ survival fight as they sit six points behind London Wasps seven games from the Aviva Premiership finish line. Rugby’s version of the tortoise and the hare has seen Newcastle cast adrift from week one, but with Wasps swimming through treacle at the moment, momentum seems to be swinging the Falcons’ way when it matters most.
New broom Gold has banished himself from talking about the drop, but Pilgrim shows no such constraints.
