Whitehaven head coach Gary Charlton felt his side had done enough to maintain their impressive League One season at Kingston Park and were ultimately frustrated through their own mistakes.

Losing for only the second time in the league in 2019, head coach Charlton pointed to the number of errors given up by his side as the difference between the two teams as Whitehaven’s lead at the top of the pile was trimmed to just two points.

Charlton said, “We made too many errors, especially at that back end of the second half. We invited Newcastle back into the game by giving them good field position and if you give them that, they are going to punish you and that is ultimately what happened.

“I don’t think we got much in the way of the 50/50s, I think most of those went to Newcastle and we didn’t get a fair crack of the whip, but ultimately it comes down to our own problem of turning the ball over and only playing well for 60 minutes.”

Falling from an eight-point lead to an eight-point deficit over the course of the second half, Charlton was most frustrated that he felt Newcastle hadn’t earned the right to that turnaround and that it had come off his sides mistakes.

“It’s frustrating because I don’t think Newcastle earned the right to those scores. We won the collisions, we were dominant around the middle but we’ve switched off, given away some soft penalties, a couple of mistakes with some knock-ons.”

With North Wales Crusaders up next, Whitehaven can look to bounce back at home next Sunday and Charlton will be asking his side to take Sunday’s loss in their stride and learn from the small errors shown on Tyneside.

“There are plenty of positives, I thought our effort was outstanding and we’re not far away from being a really good team.”