IT is a blueprint that has won Newcastle Falcons a lot of admirers. Fill your backline with bright young English talent, tell your forwards to give them the ball as quickly as possible, and then stand back and watch them fling it around.

Lots of admirers, but precious few trophies. And that, according to chairman Dave Thompson, is why it is a philosophy that is now at an end.

"There has been no successful club in the professional era that has had a side that has been dominated by its backs play," said Thompson, after unveiling Steve Bates as Falcons' new permanent director of rugby yesterday. "Every club that has been successful has had a first-rate pack.

"Look at Bath as a side. They used to have a huge number of England backs in their side - just as we did - and can you remember them doing anything with that side? No. Not a thing. They didn't achieve anything because that style of play doesn't do anything in the Premiership.

"They made a conscious decision to abandon that style at the end of the 2002-03 season after they had finished second bottom. They introduced a new director of rugby, changed their style of play and, the following season, finished top. They went from second bottom to top, just by understanding the way the game has to be played in the Premiership."

That understanding has now reached the banks of the River Tyne, and just as Bath focused their attention on a forward-oriented game, so Newcastle will be adapting the style of their attacking play next season.

Gone are the likes of Mathew Tait and Toby Flood, players who were sacrificed in order to balance the books, but who also epitomise the kind of open, expansive game that has fallen out of fashion in Kingston Park's corridors of power.

Arriving instead will be a couple of agile Antipodean ball-carriers, players capable of pounding out the hard yards that have previously proved beyond a faltering Falcons pack.

Bates is a fully-fledged advocate of the 'forwards above flair' model - he would not have been appointed as John Fletcher's permanent successor if he had not been - and Thompson has seen enough in the former England scrum-half's eight games in temporary charge to convince him that a process of realignment is already underway.

"Steve has achieved everything that we set out for him (when Fletcher departed)," he said. "It maybe isn't as pretty as everybody would like, but we believe that's the way we've got to play to win games next season.

"He got the tick in the box because he convinced senior England backs that we had to change the way we played, and because he got the forwards highly-motivated to play together as a unit.

"The emphasis of our game has to move dramatically from a backs-dominated game to one that is slightly more dominated by the forwards. It is about ball-carrying, rather than the forwards simply giving the ball to the backs and spinning the game wide. In (this month's) win over Leicester, you could see it's a game plan that works."

But is it also a game plan that will be hard for the club's supporters to stomach? Ever since Sir John Hall appointed Rob Andrew to spearhead his rugby revolution, the Falcons have prided themselves on the quality of their backs play.

The likes of Va'aiga Tuigamala, Tony Underwood and, more latterly, Tait and Jonny Wilkinson have wowed the Falcons faithful, with a haul of just three major trophies in a decade tolerated thanks to the standard of rugby that has generally been on display.

If that standard drops, and Newcastle still fail to claim any silverware, will the change in playing style have been worth it?

"I disagree with anyone who says it is not going to be exciting," countered Bates. "There are good solid rugby reasons behind our change of emphasis, and rather than turning round and saying 'Let's be boring', what we are saying is 'Let's be more competitive in the tight exchanges and really give ourselves the launch pad to release our attacking game when the opportunity is there'.

"If you try to keep things simple, you should be able to increase the pace of your game. But we need to disrupt defences a bit more and, when the other team has the ball, we need to make them work very hard to score against us."

To achieve that aim, though, Bates will have to extract a series of vastly-improved performances from a pack that struggled to compete with Worcester and Leeds, let alone the likes of Gloucester and Leicester, last season.

On the evidence of recent weeks, that seems unlikely, but the former England scrum-half remains convinced that a marked improvement is not only possible, but also imminent.

"The biggest thing that excites me about next season is that I think we can improve our game in many, many ways," said Bates. "And I don't really think that's the case for a lot of the other clubs in the league. They're already playing very close to their peak.

"We know where we can improve, but I think you saw against Leicester and Wasps that our forwards are more than capable of holding their own in this league. And with a little bit of strengthening, I think we can do more than simply compete next season."