Falcons head coach Alan Tait rued his side's mistakes on Friday, as they found themselves on the wrong end of a 35-18 scoreline at Edgeley Park.

Having seen his side start the Aviva Premiership Rugby season with a defeat to Sale Sharks, the Scot said: "We've only got our own errors to blame.

"We matched them two tries to two, and in the changing room after the game I asked every single player if they felt they'd been beaten by a superior team.

"They all came back and said no, so it was only our own mistakes that cost us the game.

"We didn't look after the ball well enough in contact, the platform wasn't quite there and we got hammered on the penalty count."

With Sale fly half Nick Macleod punishing the Falcons with six penalties, Tait said: "I'm not going to come out and whinge about the referee in public, because you just have to adapt.

"I've obviously got my own thoughts on certain decisions that he made, but that's not the reason we lost the game and we will have a good look at the video to see in detail what went on around those calls.

"The real reason we lost the game was just down to our own mistakes. We were too lateral when we had the ball, forwards were getting in the 9 and 10 channel and there was too much one-out running.

"That's certainly not what we'd rehearsed in training, but having said that we still created a lot of chances so I'm not too disheartened. The scoring opportunities were there for us, we worked the ball well at times and there's plenty more to come from us.

"Now it's a case of dusting ourselves down, working on those areas in training and really attacking the London Wasps game in front of our home crowd on Friday."