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Genius or panic. The jury is still out on Newcastle Falcons’ decision to bring Andy Goode out of retirement, but it has certainly got people talking.

The 35-year-old last played a competitive game of rugby more than seven months ago, signing for London Irish in the summer but retiring in the first week of September without kicking a ball for the Exiles.

Citing a failure to recover from two off-season operations as the reason, a phonecall from Falcons boss Dean Richards while he was out walking his dog started the cogs turning again about a possible comeback.

Followers of London Irish were understandably aggrieved that a player who had committed to their cause is now going to be engaged in a relegation battle against them, having recovered from what they were led to believe were insurmountable injury problems.

Goode, for his part, insists he gave Irish first refusal on his services once he had made the decision to return, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary you have to take him at his word on that.

The former England cap will certainly be assured a hot reception should he play in next Sunday’s basement battle at the Madejski Stadium, not that he nor Newcastle will care.

The only question that matters is whether or not the move is a sensible one.

Mike Delany’s knee ligament injury sees the former New Zealand fly-half out until March, but Tom Catterick has 48 Premiership appearances to his name and Craig Willis stole the show in Saturday’s starting league debut at Leicester.

With Juan Pablo Socino also able to operate at No 10 it is not as if the cupboard is bare, and even in his prime Goode is a player who never operated at the leaner end of the fitness spectrum.

People in glass houses, and all that, but his assertion that he is doing ‘bits and bobs’ hardly smacks of a player ready to throw himself straight into a full-on relegation battle.

But for all the concerns over legs and lungs there are equal counter-arguments.

Newcastle are buying proven Premiership quality – Goode’s 2,228 points in 229 appearances making him the second-highest scorer in the league’s history.

He was a Premiership and Heineken Cup winner with Leicester under Richards and John Wells, and last season at Wasps he played a pivotal role in arguably the most exciting side in the top flight.

This next month is essentially a tune-up for a 10-week stretch of straight league games, a quirk of the fixture calendar thanks to the Rugby World Cup eating into the start of the campaign.

Those 10 weeks will define the seasons of the Falcons and all the clubs around them, and Richards would be negligent not to explore all the available options.

For Goode, the fact people are questioning him is nothing new. He has had it his entire career and it has never seemed to waver. If his fitness can reach adequate levels he will get them into the right parts of the pitch, and he has the knowhow to bring on the players around him.

It is a risk worth taking. In fact, the bigger risk would have been to do nothing.