{"id":133225,"date":"2025-09-12T22:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T22:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/133225\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T22:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T22:31:07","slug":"prem-rugby-cup-round-up-newcastle-red-bulls-and-gloucester-win-opening-pool-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/133225\/","title":{"rendered":"Prem Rugby Cup round-up: Newcastle Red Bulls and Gloucester win opening pool games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newcastle Red Bulls kicked off their new era with a comfortable 26-14 win against Harlequins in the Prem Rugby Cup, in front of a record cup crowd of 9,089 at a rain-drenched Kingston Park.<\/p>\n

Newcastle, who have rebranded from the Falcons into the Red Bulls following the completion of a takeover in August, were always in control against Quins in their Pool B opener.<\/p>\n

Tries from George McGuigan and Murray McCallum in the first half, followed by scores from Oli Spencer and Alex Hearle in the second, kept a youthful Quins outfit at arm’s length throughout and secured a bonus-point victory.<\/p>\n

Danny Wilson took charge of Quins for the final time<\/a> before he joins the coaching staff of Wales’ national team.<\/p>\n

In Friday’s other match, Gloucester registered a perfect opening to their Prem Cup campaign with a 29-15 bonus-point victory over Exeter Chiefs in their Pool A fixture at Kingsholm.<\/p>\n

Gloucester had to fight hard to gain control against Rob Baxter’s Chiefs and needed a strong second-half performance to put the game to bed.<\/p>\n

Three tries from the visitors in the first half saw them go in at the break 15-14 up, before the hosts ran in two tries from Josiah Edwards-Giraud and Jack Innard, to go with a penalty from the boot of George Barton, to stretch clear.<\/p>\n

Yet the night was all about new beginnings in Newcastle, where the Red Bull investment<\/a> has energised a side that made the semi-finals of this competition but finished bottom of the Premiership last season.<\/p>\n

And after absorbing early pressure and battling through rain which hit in the second period, the home side were always a score to the good, with even a late yellow card for Callum Hancock failing to dislodge their grip on the contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle Red Bulls kicked off their new era with a comfortable 26-14 win against Harlequins in the Prem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-133225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}