'Good honest debrief' left Newcastle Red Bulls accepting harsh reality

Newcastle Red Bulls head coach Stephen Jones insists his struggling squad has the personal pride to ensure the final five games of the Gallagher PREM season will not replicate the 62-3 hammering the team suffered at Leicester Tigers.

Bottom-of-the-table Red Bulls now face Bristol Bears at Kingston Park on Friday night with the threat of another thumping defeat, as the fifth-placed West Country side desperate to keep their play-off hopes alive. Jones is adamant motivating a squad that will see around 20 new players arrive next season and a host of the current side leaving is not a problem.

He explained: “It’s easy in a sense. As a player, where do you look first? It’s personal pride and realise that in professional sport we have another opportunity six days later and we can show how good we are and what the jersey means to you.

“We have five games left and we are very tight as a group and everyone has personal pride and we want to do the jersey justice and have to hit our standards every game. The squad are ambitious and they have spoken about sending players off in the right manner at the end of the season.

“We want to move ball, but we are in a collision sport and have to dominate to play the way we want and we had a good honest debrief about how far short we fell in our standards, and let’s respond.

Fixture

Gallagher Premiership

Newcastle

11:45

24 Apr 26

Bristol

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“Bristol is a contrast in styles with high ball movement playing the full width of the pitch early compared to Leicester, who are more direct. We have to dominate collisions in attack and defence.

“Our performances against La Rochelle and Northampton were to a standard we wanted, and Exeter and Leicester played a different way. We have to be smarter as a team.”