1) Narrow Newcastle loss a good advert for Kingston Park experience
Leicester sit in the top four having won two of their three opening games but they could just as easily be bottom staring at three opening defeats. As was the case in their opening game at Gloucester they should have lost at Newcastle, saved only by a mishit drop-goal by Joel Hodgson with the game’s final kick and a plethora of other missed Falcons opportunities. “At times they made us look very ordinary and there were also times when we made ourselves look very ordinary,” admitted Richard Cockerill, the Tigers’ director of rugby. Newcastle can at least take some solace from the manner in which they bounced back from their heavy defeat in Bath. On a lovely day this was also a good advert for the matchday experience at Kingston Park. Another smart new bar has been opened, the tuck shop beneath the main stand sells just about every sweet a kid could wish for and the big rival attraction, Newcastle’s football team, are now in the Championship. And yet 52,000 still trekked to St James’ Park to watch the Magpies lose 2-0 to Wolves the previous day while fewer than 7,000 attended Kingston Park on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. What, aside from a few more wins, will it take to make a day at the rugby more popular in the north east? Answers on a postcard to Mick Hogan, the Falcons’ ever-optimistic chief executive. Robert Kitson
2) Harsh lessons continue for Bristol in rout by Wasps
Three matches, three defeats and a grim reality to Bristol’s return to the Premiership. If not for their ill-discipline they might have caught Harlequins cold in their first match, at Twickenham, but Northampton learned from Quins’ mistakes in week two, shunned any ambitions to overplay and bullied Andy Robinson’s side up front. The driving maul aside, Bristol were defensively OK in their own half at the Ricoh but were carved apart whenever Wasps turned the ball over quickly and attacked the space from deep. These are harsh lessons that Bristol are learning and weaknesses that cannot be put right in the space of a week are being exposed. This was Wasps’ biggest win since putting 70 points on London Welsh two seasons ago and judging by the length of time it took Robinson to come and speak to the press, his squad needed plenty of encouragement that they will not suffer a similar feat to the Exiles. A first win cannot come quickly enough. Gerard Meagher
3) Northampton outline title credentials despite defeat
The Northampton director of rugby, Jim Mallinder, talked at the end of last season, when the Saints finished outside the top four, of the need to evolve their playing style, supplementing their forward power and controlling instincts at half-back with something more rarefied. An opening weekend home defeat to Bath prompted a swift revisit to the old familiar and the throttling of Bristol at Ashton Gate was followed by 55 minutes at Allianz Park of the most effective rugby Northampton have played since they won the Premiership final against Saracens in 2014, making the league and European champions look so ordinary that even veteran campaigners such as Richard Wigglesworth became rattled and petulant. The Saints kept it simple, taking no liberties when in possession, putting the ball in the air and giving the home attackers no time in possession. It unravelled only when Alex Waller was sent to the sin-bin having been overcome by the heat of the moment, but by then Northampton had shown that the old way, rather than thrill-seeking, suits them best having at last, in Louis Picamoles, found a marauding ball-carrier to replace Samu Manoa. They looked like title contenders on Saturday, getting under the skin of the leading club in Europe, let down only by a moment of indiscipline. Paul Rees
4) New ruck rules hit side effects not root cause
A third red card of the season on the third weekend, and we’re likely to see more of this particular kind. Tom Francis was contesting a ruck over the tackled Danny Care and tried to get his foot to the ball, catching the back of Care’s head with his shin. Quins scored a try seconds later, and the ref called for the TMO. As they replayed the footage, most of us on the press bench thought the question related to whether James Chisholm had somehow illegally cleared out Francis. Mark Mapletoft, Quins’ head coach, alerted us instead to the contact between Francis’s shin and Care’s head, pointing out the new directive that the clubs had been issued with at the start of the season. If you try to go for the ball and make contact with a player’s head, you’re likely to be sent off. Rob Baxter, Exeter’s head coach, also cited it. There were no complaints. Will Chudley had got away with similar in Exeter’s first game against Wasps, but Francis was not so lucky. If they were to ban the swinging boot of a player in a ruck, no one would mourn it. But they haven’t. It remains legal and will continue to happen; it’s just that now you can be sent off for it if you happen to catch someone’s head. Yet another case of the lawmakers coming down hard on side effects without addressing the root cause. Brace yourselves for a rush of red cards this season. Michael Aylwin
5) Fotuali’i a force again for Bath as Warriors miss Hougaard
A tale of two scrum-halves in Bath’s bonus point victory over Worcester. One at the heart of another resounding victory for the league leaders in the shape of Kahn Fotuali’i; the other, Francois Hougaard, almost 12,000 miles away and conspicuous by his absence for Worcester. Bath’s renaissance under Todd Blackadder is thanks in no small part to the arrival of Fotuali’i, an electric No9 but, perhaps unlike Nikola Matawalu, one who is keeping things simple, providing George Ford with the kind of reliable, speedy service on which he thrives. Hougaard had a similar impact on Worcester when he arrived in February, playing a fundamental role in keeping the Warriors’ clear of the relegation scrap but on Saturday he was toiling out on the wing in South Africa’s thrashing at the hands of New Zealand. Good scrum-halves can make things look remarkably straightforward and while Bath are reaping the rewards of Fotuali’i doing just that, Hougaard cannot return for the winless Warriors quickly enough. GM
6) Sale need to reconstruct fortress Salford
Last season, Sale nearly made it. Their unbeaten home record in the Premiership stood from 25 April 2014 – at the ash end of the 2014-15 season – right up until the 77th minute of their final home game of the last campaign, when a penalty from Gloucester’s Greig Laidlaw condemned them to a narrow, but deserved, 11-12 defeat. Gloucester repeated the trick in deepest darkest Salford on Friday night, albeit far more comfortably as they eased to a 26-13 win. Given the amount of young, exciting talent in the Sale side – Will Addison, Sam James, Dan Mugford and Josh Beaumont are all exciting prospects – there is little excuse for them to show so little spark in an anaemic display in front of their own fans. Sale beat a disappointing Harlequins last weekend but will have expected better against a Gloucester side who threw away their opening match against Leicester and could not beat 14-man Worcester a week ago. Sale lost eight and won only three of their away matches last season – and two of those wins came against London Irish and Newcastle, the bottom two. If last season is any indication of what they are going to be like on the road – and their loss on the Falcons’ patch in their first game suggests it might well be – then they need to make the AJ Bell stadium a fortress once again if they want to trouble the top six. Dan Lucas
