Steve Diamond: 'I was right to jettison them'

Newcastle boss Steve Diamond is preparing to end Falcons’ 17-month search for a Gallagher Premiership win by taking his players camping on the Northumberland coast while also indulging in his favourite pastime of winding up opposition teams.

Besides entering the debate over the Rugby Football Union cashing in on the naming rights for Twickenham, which he described as “magnificent”, he dismissed the notion that any of the other nine Premiership teams have cut their playing staff like Newcastle, who will operate with just 35 professional players this season aided by 20 academy youngsters.

Ahead of next month’s 2024/25 campaign kick-off at home to Bristol, a team that defeated Newcastle 85-14 in April, Diamond said: “I don’t think other squads will be operating like us – all of them will be spending up to the salary cap. “I have been coaching for 23 years and know the kidology that goes on. All of them will be spending up to the cap plus their marquee player, so the only reason they would reduce the squad is because they were paying the players too much money.

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“We have done our numbers and no other squad has reduced its numbers like Newcastle. That’s up to them and for us, besides winning games, we have to make the business sustainable. None of the Premiership businesses are sustainable and that is part of my job up here. Selling the naming rights of Twickenham is magnificent for rugby, which has been through its worst period. But we are not out of the water yet.”

By sticking to just 35, Newcastle will put a strain on a playing squad that has to learn to win again. However, Diamond is adamant the changes implemented have given the club a stronger squad. In a typically blunt comment, he said: “Of the 17-20 players who left us, only two have got a job in Premiership and I was right to jettison them, and the six or seven new players are better than the ones that left. We have reduced the squad size to 35 and we have 20 kids through the system.

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“We will see where we are in the first six or eight games. We were beaten 85-14 by Bristol last season and we play them first this and if we get beat 80-0 or 80-5 it will be an improvement!  Our target is to be a highly competitive Premiership team and when we go away camping we will work on the strategy of how that will happen.”

Despite propping up the Premiership for far too long, Diamond is convinced that a team whose last league win came against Gloucester in March 2023 can “put a cat amongst the pigeons next season. “There has been a systemic failure in the place. There are lads who have over that four-year period one about a dozen games. Last year wasn’t a blip – it was a culmination of poor recruiting.

“We haven’t changed much here except the attitude which was necessary as the club hasn’t won a Premiership game for 17 months, so we have a very direct way we are going to play and the players have come back in fantastic condition. The irony is that the six players who have joined us from other Premiership clubs are not as fit as the guys who are here. It is now about a little bit of knowledge and skill and see where we go because we are in it to win everything.

“The experience they had up here with Dean Richards (former director of rugby) has been sadly missed and I bring something similar to that. We will make Kingston Park a formidable place for other teams to come to despite the fact they spend twice as much money as us.

 “No one has done more than me in the Premiership and rugby in the north is really important to me. We have to prove the doubters wrong who think we won’t win a Premiership game and no doubt the other teams will be thinking the same. We have no pressure and by training here we need to understand the weather better than anyone else and we will have some advantages. I want to be pushing for Europe next season.”