Worcester Warriors played all the rugby at Kingston Park yesterday, conjured two well-worked tries against opponents who never looked like breaching their line, had three more controversially disallowed and are bizarrely still winless after ten Guinness Premiership matches.

The better team buckled against the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, who supplemented four earlier penalties with a winning 40-metre dropped goal seven minutes from the end, as Newcastle Falcons grimly wound the clock down.

The contrast with their brilliant back play in beating Saracens the previous Sunday could not have been more stark, with Mathew Tait and Toby Flood frozen out of a dire encounter and Wilkinson failing to light the touch paper.

Mike Ruddock, the Worcester director of rugby, went in search of Rob Debney, the referee, to ask him to explain how Aleki Lutui was twice judged to have been held up over the Newcastle line, when the hooker was convinced he had got the ball down on each occasion. Ruddock’s gripe with a forward pass by Pat Sanderson to dispatch Thinus Delport late on was less convincing, but there was little doubt that Worcester were unfortunate.

“If they’d won, we wouldn’t have had too much to grumble about,” John Fletcher, the Newcastle director of rugby, whose team’s saving grace was Worcester’s ill-discipline, said.

Wilkinson’s first two penalties came in front of the posts and he was successful with two of three long-range efforts after the break. He had scuffed a similar dropped goal attempt after 49 minutes, before getting his sights right in breaking the 12-12 deadlock.

Worcester’s first win is surely around the corner if they continue producing tries of the calibre they did. Miles Benjamin, 19, scored on his first start on the wing, after Rico Gear had sprinted off his flank to link up with Loki Crichton and the outstanding Delport. Another midfield move involving Crichton and the dangerous Sam Tuitupou enabled Gear, the former All Black, to break his try duck. “Credit to Newcastle but we deserved to win,” Ruddock said.

Scorers: Newcastle: Penalty goals: Wilkinson 4 (11min, 40, 42, 66). Dropped goal: Wilkinson (78). Worcester: Tries: Benjamin (32), Gear (57). Conversion: Crichton.

Scoring sequence (Newcastle first): 3-0, 3-5, 6-5 (half time), 9-5, 9-12, 12-12, 15-12.

Newcastle Falcons: M Tait; T May, T Visser (rep: O Phillips, 68), T Flood, J Rudd; J Wilkinson, J Grindal (rep: L Dickson, 59); J Golding (rep: M Ward, 52), A Long, C Hayman, A Perry, M Sorenson, G Parling (rep: R Winter, 59), B Woods, B Wilson.

Worcester Warriors: T Delport; R Gear, D Rasmussen, S Tuitupou, M Benjamin; L Crichton, M Powell (rep: J Ar, 79); D Morris (rep: M Mullan, 79), A Lutui, T Taumoepeau (rep: S Ruwers, 80), G Rawlinson, C Gillies (rep: W Bowley, 67), T Wood (rep: C Quinnell, 71), P Sanderson, D Hickey.

Referee: R Debney.

Attendance: 7,219.