Newcastle Red Bulls head coach Alan Dickens wants his side to use the Prem Rugby Cup as a “stepping stone” to success this season.<\/p>\n
Newcastle are bottom of the Gallagher Prem<\/a> having lost all five matches so far and were thrashed 52-14<\/a> by Harlequins on Saturday.<\/p>\n Their next three matches come in the Cup – starting against Leicester on Friday – and Dickens wants his side to mirror the likes of Exeter, Northampton and Bath by using success in the competition to launch a challenge in the league. <\/p>\n He told BBC Radio Newcastle: “It’s very important, we want momentum and every time we step onto the pitch, that gives us a chance to improve.<\/p>\n “If you look at the history of this competition, lots of teams who win it use it to build on. It’s a stepping stone and we want to win every game.”<\/p>\n Dickens plans to make changes to his team, confirming that former Crusaders back-row Tom Christie will join in training next week ahead of successive away Cup games at Northampton and Saracens. <\/p>\n Wing Christian Wade, meanwhile, will be available from the start of December on his return to union from a stint in rugby league with Wigan.<\/p>\n “We do need to freshen up, we have senior players in the squad who need game time and we will make changes on Friday,” Dickens said.<\/p>\n “We have new players arriving and adding to the group. We have talked a lot about cohesion and getting players into our system. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newcastle Red Bulls head coach Alan Dickens wants his side to use the Prem Rugby Cup as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-231368","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\/231368","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=231368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}