“You cannot let something like this happen and not address the problems,” the Australian said.Their errors allowed Newcastle to join elevated company of winning teams at The Rec – last season only Wasps managed the feat.The Falcons’ superior backs, not least centre Jamie Noon, were able to swoop in at will and scoop a bonus point as well.”That was as good as any win we have had,” Jonny Wilkinson said.Wilkinson, on the sidelines for the past eight months, came through his second match unscathed and the rest appears to have done the England fly-half good. The feeling is that the referee, Steve Lander, and his touch judge confused the No 8 with another player.Whether Bath also deserved to have lost a man in the fracas is a moot point, what is not in dispute is that they did not deserve to win. For the second week running they allowed their mistakes to be punished. That was the case here.Even when Newcastle were reduced to 14 men – and eventually 13 in the final minute of normal time when the No 8 Phil Dowson was shown a red card for punching – they could find no way through.”I think it was mistaken identity,” Rob Andrew, the Newcastle director of rugby, referring to the red card.

There was a time when everyone knew where to find Bath – at the top of the rugby pile. Now the club appears to have lost its way and followers from half a dozen years ago would need a map to discover where they are this morning – at the bottom of the Premiership. London Irish: Try Appleford; Conversion Everitt; Penalties Everitt 2, Mapletoft.Gloucester: J Goodridge; M Garvey, T Fanolua, H Paul, J Simpson-Daniel; D McRae, A Gomarsall; T Sigley (N Wood 31-41, 72), O Azam (C Fortey 58), G Powell, P Buxton, A Brown, A Balding (A Eustace 70), J Forrester (A Hazell 41), J Boer (capt).London Irish: D Armitage; P Sackey, G Appleford, M Catt, S Staniforth; B Everitt (M Mapletoft 68), D Edwards (P Hodgson 52); N Hatley, A Flavin (R Russell 52), R Hardwick (P Durant 31-41), R Strudwick (capt), R Casey, P Gustard (N Kennedy 58), K Roche, K Dawson (P Murphy 40).Referee: D Pearson (Northumberland).. Few will back them to win at Northampton on Saturday, but even fewer will bet against them winning a trophy of some description this season.Gloucester: Tries Azam, Boer, Hazell; Conversion Paul; Penalties Paul 2. Points are bloody hard to come by in this league, and to see leads of 10-0 and 13-5 chucked away is pretty disappointing.”Irish were indeed the more capable side in the opening half, but the crocodiles in the Gloucester pack ruled the swamp after the break and would have claimed a bonus point but for Duncan McRae’s hopelessly over-cooked punt to the left corner in injury time. The kick was meant for Simpson-Daniel, but Simpson could have stood on Daniel’s shoulders and still seen the ball float over his head on its way into the stratosphere.

McRae might have done better to run it through the hands and trust the most inventive wing in England to finish the move in time-honoured style.Gloucester are playing at half-cock, but they have two wins from two and have yet to add three key ingredients – Phil Vickery, the World Cup-winning England prop, and the southern hemisphere signings Nathan Mauger, from New Zealand, and the Springbok prop Christo Bezuidenhout – to their Cherry and White mix. If we force our opponents to throw to the front of the line every week, I’ll be a happy man. I’m more upset at the errors that led to their first-half tries. We’d cut out their ball in the middle and back of the line-out all day long, which was why they felt they had to go for that move at the front.

And much to the frustration of Gary Gold, the Exiles’ coach, there was a certain irony about the winning score, coming as it did from a simple give-and-take routine between Gomarsall and the substitute hooker, Chris Fortey, at the front of a line-out.Fortey sprinted almost half the length of the field, thereby trebling his career yardage in a single bound, and after intelligent running from both Paul and Terry Fanolua, Simpson-Daniel put Andy Hazell away with a perfectly-weighted scoring pass.”I accept there was a lack of concentration on our part, in that Fortey was allowed to go so far,” Gold agreed “But we were pretty unlucky, even so. But Brown will beat everyone to it if he carries on like this, regardless of the stiff competition from engine-rooms elsewhere.For all their second-half dominance in conditions made unexpectedly difficult by a freak squall midway through the opening quarter, it took Gloucester the best part of 80 minutes to nail this one. James Simpson-Daniel, Henry Paul, Andy Gomarsall – all found themselves in and out of England favour, generally quicker than three art thieves in a blue-chip gallery.Forrester, back at the rear of the Kingsholm scrum after a season of injury hassle, may well mount an early challenge for a place in Andy Robinson’s post-Woodward side, for there is something gloriously different about his expressionistic work on the No 8’s canvas. But we’ve channelled his efforts in that direction, to the extent that we now see him as the best second-row defender in the country, bar none. I’ve been talking about Alex’s ability to play at the highest level for a long time, and while I don’t see every lock in England on a weekly basis, I certainly think he should be looked at in terms of a cap.”During Clive Woodward’s tenure as England coach, the good men of Gloucester were forever being looked at. London Irish, superbly coached and resourceful in the extreme, competed strongly on the Gloucester throw and made a thorough nuisance of themselves from start to finish.