Newcastle rugby director Steve Bates is hopeful Jonny Wilkinson's latest injury is not as serious as it looked.
Newcastle lose talismanic fly-half in away defeat at Kingsholm
Newcastle rugby director Steve Bates is hopeful Jonny Wilkinson's latest injury is not as serious as it looked.
The England fly-half was helped off the field after 25 minutes of the Falcons' 39-23 loss to Gloucester on Tuesday night.
Without their talismanic number 10 Newcastle battled bravely before being well beaten at Kingsholm, Iain Balshaw grabbing a hat-trick for the hosts.
Bates admitted afterwards that Wilkinson had been keen to carry on playing despite suffering suspected ligament damage.
Ligament damage
"It looks like it is something to do with his left knee," he said.
"It looks like it is some sort of ligament damage, but we will have to see how it settles down in the next couple of days.
"Jonny is a great competitor. He didn't want to come off. Hopefully, it might not be as serious as it looked."
The Falcons look certain to be without Wilkinson for their EDF Energy Cup clash against Newport Gwent Dragons on Friday night.
They battled bravely to try and pick up points on their travels, at one stage cutting Gloucester's 10-point half-time lead down to three points.
However, they wilted in the final stages, James Simpson-Daniel grabbing a brace of tries to help the Cherry and Whites pull clear.
On his team's display, Bates added: "Some parts of our performance were good, but other bits were absolutely dreadful. We made some naive errors.
"We didn't look after the ball well enough, and some of our defensive errors we will have to look closely at.
"If we had done the right thing at the right time, we could have probably made it a lot closer."
Tough start
Gloucester boss Dean Ryan was happy to see his side sitting in third spot in the Guinness Premiership after what he described as a "pretty tough start".
"We've got to adapt to what the new laws are, without losing our own characteristics," he said.
"We should have scored twice early on, and if that had happened we could have had a lot of superiority.
"It has been a pretty tough start to the season for us - we've had Leicester, Bath, Harlequins, Sale and Newcastle, and won three of those games.
"We haven't played that well, but we will be content with what we've got."