HAVING waited almost two years for an Aviva Premiership away win, Newcastle Falcons are hoping to make it two in a week when they travel to Worcester Warriors on Sunday.

Last weekend’s 18-13 victory at Gloucester was a major landmark for Dean Richards’ side, who went through the whole of last season without recording a league success away from Kingston Park.

Newcastle’s players displayed a pleasing combination of defensive resilience and attacking prowess as they triumphed at Kingsholm, with the win suggesting they should be setting their heights much higher than simply avoiding relegation again in the next eight months.

They spent much of last season battling with Worcester in the lower reaches of the table, and with tomorrow’s opponents having failed to win any of their opening four games this term, Falcons have headed south in a buoyant mood.

“We’ve got something to cling on to now,” said head coach John Wells. “We’ve probably been like a broken record every time we’ve gone away saying, ‘This game’s there for the taking, blah, blah, blah’.

“We prepared a little bit differently for the Gloucester game and got a result. Because of that, they’ve got something to hang on to. They know they can go through tough games and do it.

“We’ve just got to make sure we take this performance and put ourselves into a position to win a game, and we can say we’ve won a game in those circumstances this time last week. There’s no reason why we can’t do it again.”

Worcester might not have won this season, but Carl Hogg’s side have drawn with Gloucester and Sale Sharks and scored more than 20 points in each of their last three outings.

Their strengths clearly lie in attack, but that is balanced by a fragile defence, and Falcons’ creative players will be hoping to take advantage of any gaps that appear.

“We’re going to have to score tries because, with the best will in the world, this Worcester team can score against anyone,” said Wells. “They’ve got a set-piece starting attack as good as any in the league and they’ve got outside backs who can score tries for fun.

“We’ve got to make sure that what ball they do get, they don’t get any momentum as a result of that.

“They do have some guys that are not necessarily bad tacklers, but are probably not the best defenders, and we’ve got to try and exploit that.

“When those opportunities come along we’ve got to be ruthless, like we were last week. If we only get three opportunities we’ve got to score three tries.”

Falcons have named the same starting XV for the second week running, with the only change to the match-day squad seeing England prop David Wilson named on the bench a week after re-joining his home town club from Bath.

“We’ve been competitive in all the games except Bath away,” added Wells. “We haven’t dominated the play to the extent we can have a cigar during the game, but we’ve been competitive all the way through. Worcester are probably not too dissimilar to ourselves in that respect.”

Newcastle Falcons: Hammersley, Tait, Waldouck, Socino, Sinoti, Delany, Takulua; Vickers, Lawson, Welsh, Green, Olmstead, M Wilson, Welch, Hogg.

Replacements: Sowrey, Rogers, D Wilson, Witty, Temm, Young, Hodgson, Agulla.