Another kick in the teeth for Leeds....
Doing the Business..
By Loosehead on 10/11/2003
November 10 2003
On Saturday Leeds travelled to Sale with the unenviable record of not yet winning away from home. Sale on the other hand had the worst record of not yet winning at their new home Edgley Park. With the game under the glare of the Sky cameras one of the unwanted tags was to be lost. But which?
It ended up being the home side who took maximum points from this game. Sale started the game well with Bond going over early on, but former Leeds favourite BVS missed the extras. It didn't take Leeds long to reply with some good handling between forwards and backs; Rees sent Scarbourgh away with a well worked try and Hodge added the extras.
However after this all things seemed to go Sale's way - including the 50-50 refereeing decisons. Sale racked up 3 more tries in the first half, through Hodgson, Cairns and Hanley although at this time Leeds had been reduced to 14 men - Salter had been sin binned due to persistent infringing in the ruck. At half time it was Sale 27 Leeds 7.
The second half didn't start much better. BVS added a penalty to make the score 30-7, but Leeds tried to fight back. They spent a lot of time in the Sale half, but due to some outstanding defence by Sale and some handling errors by Leeds, they struggled to get back into the game. Although Phil Christophers did score a well worked try, Sale again scored a superb try by Going which went through many pairs of hands.
Leeds did score a 3rd try in injury time to make to score a little more respectable, although Sale did have 2 men in the sin bin by then.
Final score Sale 37 Leeds 21, and lots more work to do....