London Irish vs Newcastle match report: Geraghty kicks cut Goode down to size on his return

London Irish 20 Newcastle 15

Topsy Ojo touches down Shane Geraghty’s kick for London Irish’s second try (PA)

It is not always the case that big players win big matches, as Andy Goode discovered on his much talked-about debut for Newcastle.

The outside-half, never the most aerodynamic of individuals, is significantly larger than he once was, following a four-month retirement from the sport. “As you can see,” said the Tynesiders’ rugby director Dean Richards, “he had a fantastic Christmas.”

Yet, despite Goode’s best efforts, some of which were surprisingly eye-catching under the circumstances, he could not quite spare his clubmates the pain of returning to the bottom of the Premiership table.

By way of reinforcing the point, this game was decided by a small player, albeit one with a giant skill set. Shane Geraghty, summoned off the bench for the injured Chris Noakes at half-time, struck so much gold in his first five minutes on the field that London Irish extended their lead from six points to 20. His dead-eyed drop-out to restart the game was plucked from the ether by the impressive Alex Lewington, who duly ran in the try; his punishingly accurate diagonal kick for Topsy Ojo also resulted in a touchdown; his conversion attempts, both of them from difficult angles, were bang on the money.

On his own admission, Richards found this “galling” in the extreme. “Irish didn’t really look like scoring apart from those two tries – sloppy ones from our point of view – at the start of the second half, while we had four opportunities we failed to finish off, three of them towards the end,” he said. “I’d be more worried if we weren’t creating opportunities at all, but we have an entire international back division on our injury list at the moment and we’re not quite firing in the way we’d like.”

The Great Shambling Bear of the English game had a point: with a little more clarity of vision and greater precision with ball in hand, Newcastle might easily have won the game despite their habit of descending into chaos whenever the ball fell from the heavens. But you can bundle up all the “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes” in the world and not change the fact of the matter. While this was by no means a relegation decider, London Irish will head towards the business end of the campaign with more confidence than they might have done by lifting themselves off the bottom at the expense of their nearest rivals

If there were precious few people in the ground – sub-6,000 audiences are not quite what the Exiles planned for when they committed themselves to staying at a 24,100-capacity venue – still fewer were queuing up to argue with the head coach Tom Coventry’s assessment of the fare on offer. “It was a pretty dire game to watch,” the New Zealander remarked. “I’m sure it won’t be in any highlight packages of rugby played at this stadium.”

Yet amid the endless scrum resets – a fairly predictable feature, given the referee J P Doyle’s deep-seated determination to officiate according to every comma and full stop of the law, as well as its letter – there were a handful of half-decent performances struggling to break out. For instance, Goode, signed by the Exiles before announcing his retirement and roundly booed when he materialised in an opposition shirt towards the end of the third quarter, dragged Newcastle back into the contest with some back-to-basics, honest-to-goodness tactical interventions born of long experience.

Much the same could be said for the ageless Tongan flanker Nili Latu, who might be described as one of the ancient wonders of the union world – the rugby equivalent of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, perhaps. And while we are in an “all our yesterdays” kind of mood, the London Irish back-rower Luke Narraway put in a shift sufficiently meaningful to suggest that he, and one or two like-minded old lags, have the wherewithal to keep the Exiles in the top flight.

We have an entire international back division on our injury list at the moment and we’re not quite firing in the way we’d like.

&#13; <p>Dean Richards, Newcastle Falcons manager</p>&#13;

Eddie Jones, the new England coach, does not have the remotest interest in Narraway, whose promising international career flourished and then withered in the space of a few months back in 2008. However, he is very aware of some of the brighter London Irish youngsters: the lock Matt Symons, the centre Johnny Williams and the free-scoring wing Lewington, to name but three.

Lewington, as spring heeled as he is fleet of foot if his restart work here was anything to go by, won the man-of-the-match gong, but there was every bit as much to admire about Williams, whose rich vibrancy in attack was underpinned by a defensive physicality that must be considered a rarity among mere 19-year-olds. When the age-group cap was substituted on 65 minutes, he took some of his team’s energy with him.

This could have been costly: Newcastle, still a dozen points adrift despite Latu’s close-range try and Goode’s successful penalty strike, immediately stripped the Exiles bare down the left, with Goode combining with the full-back Simon Hammersley in a move finished by the young wing Marcus Watson. This tilted things the visitors’ way and but for some terrific tackling from Narraway at the death, they might well have completed a smash-and-grab raid to end them all.

Had they done so, they would have replaced Worcester as the bookmakers’ favourite for Premiership survival. Not that there was anything definitive about their failure to close out the game. Far from being over, the dog fight is only just beginning.

London Irish: Tries Lewington, Ojo; Conversions Geraghty 2; Penalties Noakes 2. Newcastle: Tries Latu, Watson; Conversions Goode; Penalties Goode.

London Irish: T Ojo; A Lewington, C Hearn, J Williams (F Mulchrone, 65), A Tikoirotuma; C Noakes (S Geraghty, h-t), B McKibbin; T Court (T Smallbone, 69), D Paice (T Cruse, 70), B Franks, M Symons (capt), W Lloyd (J Trayfoot, 76), J Sinclair, L Narraway, O Treviranus (B Cowan, 65).

Newcastle: S Hammersley; A Tait, C Harris, J P Socino, M Watson; C Willis (A Goode, 55), M Young; R Vickers, S Lawson (G McGuigan, 45), P Ryan (T Vea, 45), M Wilson, S Robinson, W Welch (capt), N Latu (T Clever, 65), A Hogg.

Referee: J P Doyle (Ireland).