The vultures are circling around London Welsh, but not in numbers. The lowest Premiership crowd of many a season, a throwback to the late 90s when the likes of London Scottish and West Hartlepool graced the top flight, saw them slip to a sixth defeat out of six, this time against their relegation rivals.

Salvation already looks out of reach. There have been great escapes before, not least Leeds who clambered off the canvas seven seasons ago just before the count was completed, but London Welsh have to reach the point where they are able to control a game. Given their position, they could have been expected to try to drag Newcastle into a dogfight, kicking high and chasing hard to induce mistakes, but they stuck to their passing game and it was Newcastle, prepared for the expected, who turned errors into points.

Their second try summed up the afternoon. Chris Hala’ufia, making his first start for the Exiles after joining on loan from the Scarlets, charged towards the Newcastle 22: the former London Irish No8 had made a leg-pumping impact, off-loading cleverly and making big hits, but as he was enveloped by two tacklers, his attempt at a hand-off meant he lost control of the ball. The Falcons countered immediately, Adam Powell running into space and freeing Sinoti Sinoti who supplied the scoring pass to Mark Wilson. A position of advantage had turned into another trek to their own posts. “Our errors let us down,” said the London Welsh flanker Richard Thorpe, whose scrambling defence helped keep the margin to 20 points. “We made them in the set-pieces, we missed tackled and we dropped the ball. We put ourselves in very good positions, especially in the second half, but we did not quite have what it took to score.

“We have had a very hard start, harder than we expected, and we are adjusting to life in the Premiership. We are making strides and we have come a long way with our defence. There is an eight-point gap with Newcastle, but we are only at the quarter mark of the campaign. We are not going to give up or say that it’s done. We have a team of fighters, as we showed against Newcastle. The work rate is there and if we cut out the errors and maintain the good aspects of our game, we will be competitive and start reducing the gap.”

Newcastle were fully worth their first back-to-back success in the Premiership for a year. It was never going to be an encounter to tempt one of England’s management team and the Falcons spent most of the second half in or around their 22, apart from a breakout when they turned a London Welsh dropped pass and a missed kick to touch into a try, keeping their try-line intact for the first time in the league since April 2012 and with few alarms. They had an organisation and a collective understanding their opponents lacked.

“I was pleased with the way we played in the first half, although we still lacked a bit of accuracy,” the Newcastle director of rugby, Dean Richards, said. “The most important victory for us was the one against Exeter the previous Sunday: we had been playing with a lot of ambition and the result had been coming for a while. It was always going to be a matter of time, but we had to nail it. Our defence had been the weakest part of our game but the players stood up.”

London Welsh intend using the month’s break from the Premiership to rest and recharge. The Challenge Cup and the LV Cup hold no value for them, a means to rotate the squad and tinker with tactics. There will be no respite after that with Leicester, Northampton and Saracens looming in the coming rounds. “We are measured on results, but the performance was an improvement,” said Justin Burnell, the London Welsh director of rugby.

“The next four weeks are crucial for us to assess where we are at, rest players, look at different combinations and examine our process. What is frustrating is that in certain aspects and areas we can compete but we can quickly switch off. The next four weeks is not about flogging the players but recharging them. The league was not decided this weekend and the one thing we have is fighting spirit.”

London Welsh Jewell; Stegmann, Reynolds (Crane, 74), May, Scott; Barkley, Weepu (R Lewis, 52); Henn (Cahill, 55), Morris (Vella,58-66; Henn, 78), Vea (Gilding, 16), Corker (Schofield, 52), Down, Browne, Thorpe (Pienaar, 68), Hala’ufia.

Pen Barkley.

Newcastle Tait; Sinoti (Catterick, 75), Tiesi (Clegg, 22), Powell, Cato; Socino, Tipuna (Blair, 56); Brookes (Rogers, 56), Lawson (Hawkins, 73), S Wilson (Tomaszyzyk, 56), Green, Barrow (Furno, 56), M Wilson, Welch (capt), Hogg (Mayhew, 56).

Tries Powell, M Wilson, Tipuna. Con Clegg. Pens Socino 2. Sin-bin M Wilson, 68.

Referee W Barnes. Att 2,154.