Newcastle Falcons are one more defeat away from gaining unwanted membership of English rugby’s down-and-outs club.
Only twice before in the history of the Premiership has a side gone through an entire league season losing every single game. Another loss at Gloucester on Saturday in the battle of the bottom two and Falcons will register a clean sweep.
The Corinthians can claim all they like that sport is really about the taking part but that does not wash in the professional game, where winning is the only accepted currency.
While no side has a divine right to win all of the time, every side needs to win some of the time or else what is the point?
Newcastle are not a rich club. After what happened to Wasps, Worcester and London Irish, it is a relief for the professional game in England that they are still around to fly the flag in the North-East but even so it is an acute embarrassment for the club where Jonny Wilkinson made his name.
Unlike their predecessors Rotherham in 2003-04 and London Welsh, who joined them 11 years later, Newcastle did not have to hastily cobble together a Premiership-worthy team at short notice after winning promotion. The Falcons, as established members of the top flight, knew full well its demands. They just haven’t been able to meet them.
Not even the arrival of a grizzled firefighter in Steve Diamond after the mid-season sacking of coach Alex Codling has been able to turn the tide.
So what is it like racking up L after L after L across a nine-month season?
In Rotherham’s case the experience wasn’t great for coaches Mike Schmid or Steph Nel, who both paid the price of failure during the season.
I never felt completely disheartened by the whole thing. I never found myself thinking, ‘what have I done coming here?’ or ‘what a shit-show this is’
But for the playing squad, it was not as traumatising as you might have expected according to scrum-half Guy Easterby, who captained the side when he returned from the World Cup with Ireland.
It helped that the South Yorkshire club’s fanbase stayed onside even as the losses piled up.
“The core followers had seen the club playing 10 divisions lower and appreciated the journey it had been on. Rather than saying ‘I can’t believe we’re losing every week’, most of them were saying: ‘I can’t believe we’re in the Premiership,’” recalled Easterby.
“The writing was on the wall with the early-season results but we never felt like we were completely out of our depth. We were in games and I remember being quite close a couple of times. We lost really badly to Leicester away, but it didn’t feel like we had a huge deficit in terms of quality.
“Maybe it was because we weren’t a million miles off, I never felt completely disheartened by the whole thing. I never found myself thinking, ‘what have I done coming here?’ or ‘what a shit-show this is’.
“We had some decent players and a few really good Rotherham lads who had sweated and bled for them for a long time and we kept going until the end. We’d have liked to have won in the league obviously but the group never downed tools.”
Rotherham came as close to a win as at any point during the campaign in their final game of the season at Millmoor, going down 26-20 to Newcastle to earn a losing bonus point.
They finished the season with three of them.
London Welsh managed just a single point in a catastrophic 2014-15 campaign and that was for scoring four tries in a 50-point trouncing at Bath.
We were shipping quite a few points. It will always be in the record books as the worst team ever to play in the Premiership. You can’t get away from that.
They invested in the likes of All Black Piri Weepu and England international Olly Barkley ahead of the campaign but to no avail as the side leaked more than 1,000 points in 22 games.
Even some defence sessions with Shaun Edwards didn’t work. Coach Justin Burnell was relieved of his duties five games from the end of a harrowing season to be replaced by Rowland Phillips.
“It was a tough season,” Phillips told the club’s podcast. “That group of players who had got us into the Premiership had a strong bond that allowed them to make comeback wins and to get promoted. Then there was a huge turnover of players coming in when we got into the Premiership.
“Yes, these players coming in had quality but it was difficult then to bond them into a really cohesive unit with that backs-against-the-wall mentality.
“It was difficult. We were shipping quite a few points. It will always be in the record books as the worst team ever to play in the Premiership. You can’t get away from that.”
At least Newcastle – with five points to their name – won’t be tarred with that brush whatever happens at Kingsholm this weekend, but 0 from 18 would be a tough pill to swallow.
“Nobody wants the record of going through the entire season without a league win,” said Diamond.
“But if it does happen, we’ll not cry about it. We’ll take our medicine and ensure it never happens again.”
Newcastle will be fighting on a budget half that of most of their rivals again next season. It will be up to Diamond to box clever with the resources he has.
The Falcons are fortunate that there will be no relegation on the back of this annus horribilis. Ealing do not fulfil the infrastructure requirements to be promoted so there will be no play-off with the Championship winners.
But what that means is that they will face the same uphill challenge again next season.
While owner Semore Kurdi is willing to keep the Falcons going, after 14 years he has no desire to pour millions more of his money into the project so Newcastle will be fighting on a budget half that of most of their rivals again next season. It will be up to Diamond to box clever with the resources he has.
He arrived in January as consultant director of rugby to find he would be losing a trio of the club’s best young talents at the end of the season in fly-half Louie Johnson and prop Phil Brantingham to Saracens and England A flanker Guy Pepper to Bath.
But Diamond is a canny operator and he has already made a couple of value signings in stand-off Kieran Wilkinson from Leicester and flanker Cameron Neild from Glasgow. Gloucester utility back Alex Hearle and Edinburgh prop Luan de Bruin are also on their way.
He plans to add more signings plus some loan captures next season too to bolster a slimline squad.
“The squad that we’ll have next season will make us much more competitive in the Premiership, which is no disrespect to any of the lads who are leaving us,” said Diamond.
“We’re rebooting everything here – academy, medical, coaching, playing. Everyone is getting to know what their job is and what they’re accountable for, and there are loads of talented, committed people here who are determined to make it work.”
The hope for Newcastle – and for the Premiership – has to be that they will make a better fist of it next time around.
Castaway clubs are no good for anybody.
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