Newcastle Falcons

The Newcastle Falcons (formerly Gosforth FC/Newcastle Gosforth until 1996) is an English rugby union team that has recently returned to the English Premiership as of 29 May 2013 after a season in the RFU Championship. The club was established in 1877 and played under the name of Gosforth Football Club until 1990. The name was then changed to Newcastle Gosforth and the club began to play at Kingston Park stadium in Kingston Park, Newcastle upon Tyne. At the start of the professional era the club adopted its current name of Newcastle Falcons.

The Falcons is currently the only professional rugby club in north east England, with one Premiership and four domestic cups to their name. It also boasted a number of home-grown internationals including Jonny Wilkinson, Jamie Noon, Mathew Tait, Toby Flood, Dave Wilson, Geoff Parling, Phil Dowson, Lee Dickson and Kieran Brookes.

History

Early years

The original Gosforth Football Club was founded in 1877 by a group of Old Boys of Durham School, in whose colours of green and white hoops the club played until the mid-1990s. The name Gosforth came from one of the suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1955, the club moved to a new ground at North Road which was to be its home until 1990. During that time and particularly in the late 1970s Gosforth enjoyed tremendous success both on and off the field winning the John Player Cup in seasons 1975/76 and 76/77.

English Premiership (rugby union)

The English Premiership, currently known as Aviva Premiership Rugby or more commonly the Aviva Premiership because of the league's sponsorship by Aviva, is a professional league competition for men's rugby union football clubs in the top division of the English rugby union system. There are twelve clubs in the Premiership. The competition has been played since 1987, and has evolved into the current Premiership system employing relegation to and promotion from the RFU Championship, known as National Division One before the 2009–10 season. Clubs competing in the Premiership qualify for Europe's two main club competitions, the European Rugby Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup. The current champions are Saracens. The most recently promoted side is Worcester Warriors, who, after defeating Bristol in the 2015 RFU Championship Final, returned to the top flight after a one-year absence.

History

Beginnings: English domestic rugby union until 1972

The governing body of rugby union in England, the Rugby Football Union (RFU), long resisted leagues as it was believed that the introduction of leagues would increase 'dirty' play and put pressure on clubs to pay their players (thereby contravening the amateur ethos). Instead, clubs arranged their own friendlies and had traditional games. The only organised tournaments were the County Cups and County Championship — the former played by clubs and the latter by County representative teams. The Daily Telegraph and a few local newspapers — such as the Yorkshire Post — compiled 'pennants' based on teams' performances, but as the strength of fixture lists varied, it was at best an estimate of a team's performance throughout a season.

Rugby

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Falcon

A falcon (/ˈfɔːlkən, ˈfæl-/) is any one of 37 species of raptors in the genus Falco, widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica.

Adult falcons have thin, tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and to change direction rapidly. Fledgling falcons, in their first year of flying, have longer flight feathers, which make their configuration more like that of a general-purpose bird such as a broadwing. This makes it easier to fly while learning the exceptional skills required to be effective hunters as adults.

The falcons are the largest genus in the Falconinae subfamily of Falconidae, which itself also includes another subfamily comprising caracaras and a few other species. All these birds kill with their beaks, using a "tooth" on the side of their beaks — unlike the hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey in Accipitridae, which use their feet.

Peregrine falcons have been recorded diving at speeds of 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), making them the fastest-moving creatures on Earth. Other falcons include the gyrfalcon, lanner falcon, and merlin. Some small falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some which hover while hunting are called kestrels.

Newcastle

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