Mixed feelings for Ward after Wasps win
Scoring six tries on the day, Ward admitted the Falcons had made hard work of it as they trailed at the midway stage.
“Towards the end we started to do alright, but I thought we were far too inaccurate in the first half,” he said.
“It’s always a tough one when you’ve got guys coming together who haven’t played much as a team, and we just made too many mistakes.
“We tried to fire into them and every time we got the ball early on we looked threatening, but we just couldn’t get into our rhythm.
“The final pass wasn’t sticking, we lost a couple of lineouts and just annoying little things like that. We spoke about it at half-time, and to be fair to the lads I thought they reacted well to it.
“We were a bit more clinical in the second half, and in the end we managed to get a bonus point win.
“We had 11 or 12 line-breaks in the first half, which is great, but we didn’t capitalise on enough of them.
“We maybe just broke the line and thought ‘we’re in here’ without giving the right pass or making the right decision. It seemed to snowball from there, but we pulled it round in the end.”
Crediting Saturday’s opponents, Ward added: “Fair play to Wasps, they’ve thrown in a few academy lads and nobody has really given them a chance.
“I thought they dug in and did a good job, but I also liked the way we eventually solved our own problems and got ourselves out of the hole.
“We had young lads of our own in the pack with the likes of Will Montgomery, Rob Farrar, Robbie Smith, Josh Basham and Connor Collett, to name a few. It’s great for them to be involved in a game like that where they have lots of questions asked of them, and they’ll be better for having had that experience.
“It doesn’t feel like a fantastic day’s work so close to the game because we know there’s so much more to come, but when we look back in a few weeks’ time and reflect on the fact we had a bonus-point victory with some of our young lads to the fore, I’ll maybe feel a bit better about it.”
Newcastle Falcons’ next home game is on Friday November 26 when Worcester Warriors are the Gallagher Premiership visitors. [**Click here**][1] to buy tickets.
[1]: https://www.newcastlefalcons.co.uk/news/story/book-for-worcester-on-friday-november-26
