Gloucester may sit atop the table this morning but for the third successive weekend it was English rugby's newest professional referee, Roy Maybank, who dominated the post-mortems yesterday after Henry Paul had secured the visitors a barely deserved victory with the game's final kick.
At some stage Newcastle and Gloucester will be involved in a contest devoid of controversy, intelligent life will be found on Saturn and Maybank will officiate at a game which is not settled deep into injury-time, probably in that order.
To Bath's disputed opening success at London Irish and the dramatic penalty try finale at Wasps last week can now be added Paul's winning penalty in the sixth minute of added time here - and Newcastle's director of rugby Rob Andrew was not slow to query the common denominator.
To Andrew's mind, the penalising of the replacement prop James Isaacson for not releasing at a ruck 30 metres from the Gloucester line was, at best, debatable and the dreadfully fractured nature of a game played in benign, sunny conditions provided further damning evidence.
"I'd like to look at the referee's decision again on video but I'm not sure it was a penalty against us," said Andrew, less than impressed with several of Maybank's decisions.
"I'm not going to criticise referees but he's a professional and he needs to be accountable for every decision he makes. I don't think we deserved to lose. If anything, it was a penalty to us. Until we clear up the breakdown areas to encourage quick ball we won't have a decent game in this country. It's a mess.
"Referees have got to clean it up and they're just not doing it. At least we're trying to play the game but we're not being allowed to. You don't get tries if people kill your ball."
Andrew's frustration was natural enough, his side having threatened to make a pedestrian Gloucester pay for their continued inability to reproduce their awesome home form away from Kingsholm.
After last season's much-publicised row over allegations of racial abuse involving Olivier Azam and Epi Taione, that unsavoury saga even seemed set for an ironic postscript when Taione burst through two tacklers to sprint 50 metres for a try under the posts in the 81st minute. Jonny Wilkinson added the simple conversion but, instead of a 19-19 draw, Paul stepped up to steal the show in front of the England coach Andy Robinson.
The cross-code international, having just miscued a drop attempt, drilled the winning penalty between the posts without a trace of nerves. Paul's all-round game at full-back was similarly mixed, partly as a consequence of several towering punts directed at him by Wilkinson.
Paul declared later he had never experienced anything quite like it - "It was like Hiroshima out there" - but Andrew was not exaggerating when he said Gloucester were a huge disappointment. "That was supposed to be the best side in the country and I thought we played some of the better rugby. I expected a lot more from them."
The Falcons' only prolonged defensive alarms all day came when they were reduced to 14 men, with Hugh Vyvyan in the sin-bin for some less than subtle obstruction as James Forrester tried to capitalise on a half-break by Andy Gomarsall. Packing down against only seven forwards is a gift Gloucester rarely waste and Junior Paramore duly flopped over for a 20th-minute pushover try.
With Ludovic Mercier and Wilkinson exchanging regular penalties, however, there were slim pickings for connoisseurs of vibrant, free-running rugby. Gloucester's momentum was not helped when Patrice Collazo was sin-binned for a violent push on Jamie Noon but, as ever, it was referee Maybank who belatedly tipped the scales.
Newcastle : Botham; Shaw, Godman, May, Noon; Wilkinson (capt), Charlton (Grindal, 75); Peel (Isaacson, 66), Brotherstone (Thompson, 57), Ward (Hurter, 45), Vyvyan, Grimes, Otuvaka (Taione, 45), Arnold (Devonshire, 58), Dowson.
Try: Taione. Con: Wilkinson. Pens: Wilkinson 4.
Yellow card: Vyvyan, 16.
Gloucester: Paul; Delport, Fanolua, Todd (Simpson-Daniel, 70), Beim; Mercier (Garvey, 53), Gomarsall; Collazo (Woodman, 55), Azam (Fotey, 64), Vickery (capt), Fidler (Eustace, 80), Cornwell, Boer, Forrester (Buxton, 67), Paramore.
Try: Paramore. Con: Mercier. Pens: Mercier 2, Paul 3.
Yellow card: Collazo, 43.
Referee: R Maybank (Kent). Attendance: 5,304.
