| Thompson has been a key part of a Falcons line out which has fired in their last two outings against Bristol and London Wasps, and is hoping to take that sort of confidence in to the Madejski Stadium encounter.
“The Bristol game was upsetting because we felt one decision right at the end cost us the result after a huge effort,” said Thompson.
“But we used that game to really spur us on against Wasps the week after. We felt an injustice had been done to us, and we were determined to take it out on Wasps.
“Both of those were good team performances, and we felt we deserved to win both of them. Now the main thing is to take that form down to London Irish on Saturday.”
With the Newcastle line out having come on leaps and bounds in recent weeks, Thompson said of the improvement: “After my disaster at Leicester it was a major confidence boost to have a good functioning line out against Bristol and Wasps, and the boys have to be pleased with the way they went in the set piece overall.
“Going in to the Wasps game especially we simulated a lot of their line outs in training, we had two full packs doing competitive line outs and we spent a lot of time defending the shapes and movements that Wasps use in the line.
“We knew that Wasps had a very good driving game so we really had to cut them off at source, but London Irish will provide a totally different challenge in the line out.
“They compete heavily on opposition ball, especially through Nick Kennedy, so we’ve had that in mind this week when we’ve been working on our set piece. We’ve mimicked a lot of their movements and practised defending them, but they are still a very strong team in that area and we know it won’t be an easy task to stop them there.”
There are also similarities in the way Irish defend to Wasps and Bristol, with Thompson noting: “Bristol and Wasps both fly up in defence, as London Irish do, so we hope we can take our performances against those sides and really give a good account of ourselves.
“In the home game against Irish we felt we actually coped with their defence reasonably well, but due to the line out not functioning we weren’t able to build much territory or possession. We feel we’ve learnt from that now, but Saturday will be a good test of where we are.”
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