Newcastle director of rugby Steve Bates conceded that the better side had won at Kingston Park on Sunday, following London Irish's 24-8 Guinness Premiership victory over his Falcons side.

Speaking after the match, Bates said: “You have to give a lot of credit to London Irish, because they came here, physically dominated the game and put us under a lot of pressure.

“We lost today to a better side, and we have to take that on the chin.

“They made us work extremely hard at the set piece, Nick Kennedy dominated the line out and they put us under a lot of strain, both physical and mental.

“We were doing well to be in touch at 10-8 down in the early stages of the second half, but they turned the screw for the last 25 or so minutes and made it an uphill struggle. As I say, they deserve a lot of credit for that, and ultimately we were beaten by the better team today.”

Turning to his own side, he added: “From our own point of view there was no shortage of effort, we started well with Brent Wilson's try but we were just quite not there in terms of getting over the line again.

“The pressure we were put under in the first half in terms of energy expended in defence took its toll as the game went on, and they wore us down pretty convincingly.

“We had worked hard during the week on how to get round the London Irish blitz defence, and it was frustrating that we didn't manage to execute those plays untl late in the game when the result was already out of reach.

“On the few occasions that we did create some attack there were some decent contributions from the likes of Danny Williams and Tane Tu'ipulotu on his debut, but the physicality of Irish was such that we had to commit too many bodies to the breakdown which meant we never really had the numbers out wide when we managed to get the ball.

“Our ruck ball was slow, which allowed their defence time to get lined up, so you have to say well done to them because they came here with a very effective game plan and executed it well.”

With yet more names added to an already laden injury list, Bates said: “We lost Ed Williamson with a shoulder problem and then his replacement Russell Winter looks like he has pulled a hamstring, so we're down on numbers but we need to bounce back.

“We are slowly getting some guys back like Geoff Parling, Andy Buist and Davey Wilson, and we now have a short turnaround to get the minds focused for what will be a tough trip to Worcester on Friday.”

Ahead of Friday's Sixways tussle, he added: “We just need to get our heads down and keep working hard on our game.

“We have a lot of injuries in key areas, but then so do other sides so we won't use that as an excuse.

“We now have a tough trip to a strong Worcester squad which won this weekend, so it's a case of getting ourselves ready for that challenge and throwing everything at it.”