Dragons take deserved victory

Newcastle Red Bulls travelled to Newport to take on The Dragons last night in the final group game of The European Challenge Cup.

Strong Dragons start but Red Bulls hold firm

Dragons, as expected on home turf came out all guns blazing and took the game to Red Bulls but the Red Bulls defence stood firm. The dangerous Rio Dyer ran a really nice line to open the scoring after half an hour. Then probably against the run of play Red Bulls scored two quick fire tries, the first was through some really nice hands and wheels from Simon Benitez Cruz to finish in the corner. The second straight after was from Dragons playing advantage tried a cross field kick ending their advantage, Christian Wade caught the ball and raced to the try line. Red Bulls took a 12-7 half time lead after weathering a strong Dragons storm.

Hodgson yellow seemed harsh to me

Jamie Hodgson saw yellow in the early stages of the second half. Hodgson and the attacker both dipped into the tackle clashing heads. The referee decided it was a yellow card, for me I think there was an argumment to say although it was head on head it was a rugby incident and leave it at that.

Red Bulls lacked energy

I was a big fan of Red Bulls going strong for this one given the need to be ranked as high as possible gonig into the knockout stages of Europe. I know there's players who have had a huge workload and this seemed to show last night. Physically and emotionally it seemed a bit flatter compared to the last couple of weeks when they took it to Gloucester and Perpignan. That's no disrespect to The Dragons who on their on patch and with Welsh Rugby in a seemingly never ending crisis took it to Red Bulls. From the first whistle they were physical, very much in a similar way that Red Bulls have been at Kingston Park recently.

A loss

Ultimately Red Bulls lost the game convincingly, 35-12 which is going to make going through the tournament more tricky. They just never really got going last night and for me the efforts of the last few weeks have caught up with them. Although Benitez Cruz was his usual sniping self, Grayson never really got the backs firing and had a bit of a game to forget. The Hodgson yellow card was costly and took the game away from Red Bulls.

Not all is lost

This is a competition that Newcastle didn't progress in last season so there's progress on that front and in the spring there's knockout rugby to look forward to. All attention now turns to other results in the competition to see what Red Bulls seeding looks like. For the coaches and players attention turns to a tough away trip to Saracens in The Prem next Saturday afternoon.