Richards salutes Falcons’ doggedness
Speaking after his team’s 16th successive victory, the director of rugby said: “We knew it would be hard down here, we’d been saying it all week and that’s how it panned out on the night.
“Nottingham are a really good side, and there won’t be many teams come here and put a lot of points on them.
“I think they’re probably the most organised team we’ve played against, which is a credit to their coaches, and they were very well drilled. Their full-back and scrum-half both played really well, they made life tough for us and in the end I was happy to come away with the four points.”
Having Nemani Nagusa, John Hardie and Toby Flood all sent to the sin bin, Richards said: “I don’t know whether we have an issue with that set of officials or not but we never quite seem to get the rub of the green, and we had a 7-1 penalty count against us at half-time with two men in the bin.
“A couple of those you say ‘fair dues’ but you’ve got to look at both sides, and I just felt they looked at one side a little too harshly at times.
“That’s life, though, and you have to play around it and be better than we were. When we went down to 13 men it caused us an issue, but in some ways I was pleased with how we dug in and still came away with the win.”
Having endured a Sunday to Friday turnaround with back-to-back away games, he added: “We said we weren’t going to use the short turnaround as an excuse and I’m not going to do that, but with a bigger gap until the Ampthill game we can enjoy a better preparation period.
“I thought the boys dug in well tonight against a good side, and it’s another four points.”
Newcastle Falcons’ next game is at home to Ampthill on Sunday February 2, with the 1pm kick-off followed at 3pm by the France v England game on the stadium TVs. To book tickets please [**click here**][1], call 0871 226 6060 or visit the ticket office in person.
[1]: https://www.eticketing.co.uk/newcastle-falcons/EDP/Event/Index/1488?
