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Your support makes all the difference.Moving up a gear, Newcastle took off the handbrake yesterday to secure themselves a place in the top flight next season after destroying London Scottish 71-20, taking the second automatic promotion spot in Courage League Two behind champions Richmond.
Those two big-spenders will take the places of Orrell, already relegated from League One before their comprehensive 22-44 defeat by Saracens, including a dominant forward display from Richard Hill and Francois Pienaar who scored a try apiece, and West Hartlepool - 18-33 losers at home to London Irish.
The Exiles will be in the playoffs come season's end with Bristol, who finished level, 20-20, at Kingsholm with Gloucester, despite being without the services of their captain, the flanker Martin Corry, and the England caps Simon Shaw and Mark Regan, Bristol matched their West Country neighbours blow for blow.
If Bristol manage to keep their noses in front of Irish for ninth place they will play Bedford in the two-legged playoffs on 7 and 11 May, after the London side lost 30-11 to Coventry. The Midlanders ensured they would finish in third place in League Two, no matter their result against Wakefield next Saturday.
Nottingham, who helped Richmond's celebrations by succumbing 34-0, and Rugby, who came away from Waterloo with a 12-45 disappointment, are already relegated but their replacements from League three remain unresolved: any two from Fylde, 39-9 winners over London Welsh, Exeter, who beat Otley 26-14, and Leeds - who warmed up for the run-in by putting a 74-10 scoreline over Havant - will go up.
Clifton are already relegated from League Three, but the positions for the other three drop-spots is as tight as the promotion battle is at the other end of the table: Walsall, who went down 19-25 to Rosslyn Park, Havant, Redruth and Liverpool St Helens, who did their chances of survival no harm with a hard-fought 32-27 win against Harrogate, are all in that dog-fight. Worcester and Newbury, the winners of Leagues Four North and South respectively, will replace them in a smaller division next year.
In the Southern Hemisphere the Super 12 became even tighter at the top as the Australian Capital Territory romped to a crushing eight tries to nil, 56-9 victory over rivals New South Wales.
The Wallaby international Joe Roff and his fellow ACT winger Mitch Hardy scored two tries each to help propel ACT to a one-point lead over Auckland. The New Zealand side face a tough test against Natal today.
Argentine international prop Patricio Noriega, inspirational scrum-half George Gregan and centre James Holbeck also scored tries for the Brumbies, while New South Wales were restricted to three penalties kicked by their international full-back Matthew Burke.
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