Former Hawke's Bay Magpies rugby coach Peter Russell is a step closer to his first trophy in a so-far-unbeaten debut season in the United Kingdom, with his team thrashing their quarterfinal opponents in the first knockout round of the British and Irish Cup.
Having well beaten Welsh opponents Cross Keys and Newport and Irish side Connacht in the home-and-away pool-play preliminaries, Russell's Newcastle Falcons beat Nottingham 72-17 at the weekend.
Just a fortnight ago, the Falcons had a 14-12 English Championship top-of-the table clash with Nottingham, one of the closest calls in a sequence which has seen Newcastle win 28 games consecutively since the start of their season in September.
They face up to eight more matches, including the last two of 22 round-robin matches in the Championship, the second-tier of the English league system, followed by a semifinal and final in the Cup, for the UK's second-tier clubs.
But the target will be the home-and-away championship semifinals and final, and promotion back to the top league, the Premiership, from which Newcastle was relegated before the club hired Russell as head coach a year ago.
