London Irish head coach Toby Booth admitted his whole set-up must learn lessons from a thoroughly disappointing 15-11 defeat to Newcastle at the Madejski Stadium.

Last season's Guinness Premiership finalists produced one of their worst performances under Booth's command in blustery conditions, but he refused to blame the abject display on anything other than his own camp's deficiencies.

"I'm not best pleased, for obvious reasons. I'm disappointed by the nature of it (the defeat) - it was pretty disappointing," said Booth.

"This game will teach you a lesson pretty quickly if you don't pay it enough respect and I think I'm going to have a long look at what I've done this week, because I'm going to need to improve.

"The coaches are going to need to improve and the players themselves know what they need to do to improve. If you're not leaving every stone and rock unturned you might get taught a lesson.

"Newcastle were very workmanlike and grafting, they deserve some credit, but it took us 40 minutes to get our intensity and we then looked more like the side we are.

"The first 15 minutes of the second half were excellent, but it's taken us 40 minutes to get there - and that's not acceptable."

Victorious Newcastle boss Steve Bates was delighted to have banished memories of January's 48-8 thrashing by Irish at the Madejski, after his side recorded a first win in almost four years against the Exiles.

"I'm really pleased for the boys, they worked hard this week on a specific game-plan and that's worked for us," said Bates.

"We wanted to keep in touch with the game and maybe frustrate Irish a bit.

"If you let them get on top they can really put their foot down, and that's what happened here last season."

Bates' team failed to score a try, but had chances.

He added: "If we're going to be critical, we could have put the game out of sight. We were one pass off going under the sticks and we had an overlap and went inside. We had opportunities and we'll have to take that on.

"We've had everyone fit and prepared more thoroughly this last couple of weeks has set us up and I thought today that was pretty obvious.

"It was a really physical, quick game but we kept our shape. That's the benefit of us having time together."