'Nine hours' - Newcastle Falcons 'unable to cope'

Director of rugby Phil Dowson urged Northampton to display the sort of form they showed in their 61-0 thumping of Newcastle more often in the second half of the season.

Losing five of their first eight games of the campaign in the Gallagher Premiership left defending champions Saints eighth in the table and with plenty to do if they were to retain their title.

However, Saturday was an ideal afternoon for them as they had the bonus point in the bag after just 15 minutes at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens where they ran in nine tries in total.

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Dowson said: “We’ve had periods of this sort of quality throughout the season. We’re a very capable group, we just haven’t been able to do it more.

“I’m thinking of the Sale game where we came out and played really well first half. The second half of Quins we were very good, but other times we’ve been off, I think we saw that last week (at Saracens).

“The response last week was great after half-time, but we’ve been a bit reactive rather than really setting our stall out.

“We have to get away from being this sort of Jekyll and Hyde team, which is what I spoke about last week with the group after the game.

“We did have a great response, we had a great response here against Castres after we were disappointed with Gloucester, so we need to find some consistency in our performance – which is easier said than done.”

Northampton ripped into Newcastle through tries from Alex Coles, Trevor Davison (2) and Alex Mitchell, while further scores from Josh Kemeny and Tommy Freeman had them 40-0 up at half-time.

Two Tom Pearson tries brought up the half-century before Rory Hutchinson’s breakaway score rounded off proceedings as Fin Smith and Hutchinson added the extras.

Newcastle consultant director of rugby Steve Diamond said: “We were beaten in every area and you can forget the long travel – it did take us nine hours to get here, which is ridiculous.

“We did have three or four cry-offs, but it just shows the difference of those who have and those who have not at the moment.

“Our squad isn’t able to cope week-on-week, playing the bigger squads in size, like this for example and Bath last week.

“We weren’t competitive today and that was a culmination of being highly-competitive last week against Bath and still losing without getting a losing bonus point.

“The lads try, (but) we need some better quality players and a larger squad to compete in the Premiership and we haven’t got it at the moment, that’s nothing different to what we’ve had all year.

“We will pick wins up, probably at home because coming away from home is always difficult.”