Substitute Dave Walder moved Newcastle off the bottom of the Guinness
Premiership with the last kick of the game against Wasps.
With the soaking Kingston Park surface dominating proceedings, both sides
managed two tries each.
Mike McCarthy's early effort for the Falcons was quickly followed by a Paul
Sackey score.
Jeremy Staunton put the visitors ahead but was quickly pegged back by Jamie
Noon with the pick of the touch downs.
Walder then nicked victory for the Falcons with a last-gasp penalty.
Newcastle were determined to seize the initiative and after Matthew Burke's
kick-off they were presented with an early scoring chance when Wasps failed to
gather and were then penalised at the breakdown.
The normally reliable Burke missed from around 35 metres but his team did not
have to wait long to take the lead.
Rob Andrew's men were pounding away in midfield until winger Mathew Tait
finally broke through into the Wasps' 22 and after several phases, flanker
McCarthy powered over from around 10 metres out in the seventh minute.
Burke kicked the conversion but the Londoners hit back almost immediately.
Working the ball right, Mark Van Gisbergen beat his man and gave winger Sackey
the yard of space he needed to score.
Van Gisbergen missed the conversion and apart from an Eoin Reddan kick that
was just too long for Sackey to get a hand to inside the in-goal area, the
conditions dominated the rest of the opening period.
Andrew had selected Toby Flood at outside-half with a view to attack but the
youngster was given little time or space by the Wasps defence and was eventually
replaced.
Newcastle threatened just before the half-time whistle but Rob Hoadley caught
Tom May's crossfield kick and managed to touch down under pressure from Burke.
The stalemate continued after the break until Wasps disrupted a Newcastle
scrum and Reddan kicked into space, with Burke having to kick behind after
Tait's fumble.
That set up a spell of pressure which eventually saw Newcastle penalised under
the posts for going in at the side and Van Gisbergen nudged Wasps ahead with an
easy three points nine minutes into the second half.
Two minutes later they were eight points clear after Tait dropped Staunton's
chip and the Wasps outside-half followed up for an easy touchdown with Van
Gisbergen slotting the conversion.
May was stretchered off with what looked like a serious injury 13 minutes into
the second period but the Falcons soon replied.
With Walder having replaced Flood, the stand-off fed Noon from a scrum and the
centre, discarded by England, skipped past two tackles to slide in next to the
posts, setting up a simple conversion for Burke to narrow the gap to a point.
As the clock ticked down, the Falcons continued to battle and Walder was
off-target with a 40-metre drop goal but he faired better with his decisive late
penalty.
E-mail Article 
Print-Friendly
Subscribe to RSS Feed 
Post to del.icio.us
Facebook