The rain that had swamped West Wales on Friday and turned Llanelli's night pitch black continued its passage eastwards and turned the Dragons' Saturday lunchtime sludge grey. Two home games in Wales, two defeats for the home regions. Two Welsh teams - half the professional total - can more or less kiss the Heineken Cup goodbye. This was a cracker of a game, but the fall-out will be as mournful as the weather.
Newcastle came down without Jonny. His haemat... haemhat... the deep bruise in his bicep has revived the debate about his entire career, but his team shook off the loss of their illustrious star and played horrible, ugly, effective rugby. In the bog of Rodney Parade, Wilkinson could hardly have played better than Dave Walder, who stood in for him.
So beautifully ugly were the Newcastle pack that at some stage it had to, as they say, go off. The Dragons tend to get their own way up front in the Celtic League and were not best pleased at having their line-out drives disrupted by an outfit that does not exactly frighten the life out of everyone in the Zurich Premiership.
Frustrations were brewing in the second half, in which not a single point was scored, and came to a head when second-rows Ian Gough and Luke Gross traded blow after blow on the hour.
After a lengthy consultation between the Irish officials, referee Donal Courtney flashed the red card at American Gross, for introducing a bit of knee into the fisticuffs. He waved nothing at Gough because the lock had sort of sneaked off, to be replaced by Peter Sidoli. But had he been there, he would have been shown the yellow card, so Sidoli did not appear for a further 10 all-important minutes.
With 14 against 14 and with the wind and rain at their backs, Newcastle held the Dragons easily at bay. Colin Charvis, back after his season with Tarbes in France for an afternoon in Wales, was outstanding in the close-quarter exchanges, wrestling for ball above ground or below the steaming piles of bodies.
When Sidoli eventually came on, the Dragons had only about nine or 10 minutes of numerical superiority. Had they had more time, they might have won, for they ended the game hammering away at the tryline. The last act of the game was Gareth Wyatt dropping a pass that might have put him clear.
In fairness, it was not the only pass dropped on the day. The ball squirted out of grasp after grasp. The harder the carriers battered, the more the ball came out of their hands like an orange pip. And it was not the biggest howler of the day. That was reserved for Kevin Morgan in the first half.
The full-back has had a miserable career with injuries, but this season he has been running free and has been playing himself back into the international frame. This, however, was not one for the portfolio.
A tackle by Jamie Noon on Michael Owen had turned the ball over to Newcastle, who booted it forward. Back and down went Hal Luscombe. The wing fed Morgan, who started to run. He beat one, then two, then a third, but when he eventually tried to clear the ball from behind his line Mike McCarthy charged it down and followed up to score.
The remainder of the points came through penalties, all three in the first half. On the action front, there was little to report except for the Dragons' final assaults. The game was simply all about not making a second grave error.
It was still absorbing stuff, disturbed only by the consultation on the touchline concerning the Newcastle front row. Ian Peel had been replaced by Marius Hurter, who then went off, to be replaced by James Isaacson, who had been replaced by Matt Thompson. Peel then came back on to replace Micky Ward. Question: Should the scrums be uncontested? Answer: Er, don't know; probably not. It's the same answer to the question: is rugby in Wales going anywhere?
NEWPORT GWENT DRAGONS: Morgan; Wyatt, Montgomery, Tuipolotu, Luscombe (Brew 71); Sweeney, Cooper (Baber 80); Snow (Black 57), Jones (Richards 71), Thomas (Anthony 57), Gough (Sidoli 79), Owen, Ringer, Forster (capt), Bryan (Beattie 70).
NEWCASTLE: Burke; May, Noon, Tait, Stephenson; Walder, Grindal (Charlton 51); Peel (Hurter ht; Isaacson 74), Isaacson (Thompson ht), Ward (Peel 51), Gross, Grimes, McCarthy (Sititi 59), Charvis, Dowson.
Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).
