Irish keep their home record intact

London Irish gained a psychological boost before their Tetley's Bitter quarter-final by beating Sunday's opponents Newcastle 19-17 in a Zurich Premiership match at Reading's Madejski Stadium.

Watched by England coach Clive Woodward, Irish maintained their unbeaten home record in front of nearly 5,000 fans.

They did so without injured captain Conor O'Shea and will now travel to Newcastle at the weekend confident that they can repeat the exercise.

They always held the upper hand but had to withstand some fierce Newcastle pressure in the closing stages.

With 12 minutes to go Newcastle did have a chance to level the scores but Dave Walder ' s attempted conversion of Gareth MacLure's try sailed wide.

Life was not made easy for the Irish by referee Chris White's decision to show the yellow card to both Dinos Alexopoulous and Ofisa Tonu'u in a stormy second half.

Walder kicked Falcons in front with a third-minute penalty and then the usually reliable Barry Everitt missed with a penalty for Irish.

Everitt was successful with his next two penalties and the Irish drew further ahead when they were awarded a penalty try after Mark Delaney was pulled down by Newcastle just short of the line.

Another Walder penalty made the half-time score 13-6 to Irish.

Two second-half penalties from Everitt and two from Walder took the score to 19-12 before MacLure's try and Walder's miss with the attempted conversion.