Sale 16 Leicester Tigers 18

By Whaley Shark
February 26 2011

I cannot claim that I turned up on Friday with any great confidence and, chatting to those around me before kick off, neither had they. So it was with some anxiety that we watched Charlie Hodgson get the game under way.

We started with some purpose, making ground into the Tigers 22 from a tap penalty but, in our urgency, we conceded a penalty and handed Tigers the advantage. Twice in the first ten minutes, they set up good positions by running penalties, then waited for us to infringe and Staunton slotted the kicks. Just as the game looked like it might start to get away from us, we recovered equilibrium and exerted some pressure of our own, allowing Charlie to tie the scores with a penalty and drop goal. Our scrum, which had held up quite well so far, then went badly wrong and some desperate defending gave Tigers a kickable penalty and Sean Cox ten minutes in the bin.

The second twenty minutes was pretty even, with Charlie levelling the score at nine all through a long range penalty, before we went behind a couple of minutes before half time, conceding an easy kick which Staunton converted. Just at the end of the half, we started to make some dents in the Tigers’ defence, first through Miller fielding a loose kick and setting up Brady for a penetrating run up the right wing, though he was narrowly bundled into touch. The Tigers’ lineout misfired though, the ball went loose and Captain Gaskell hacked it on. Tigers scrambled it out of play, relieved to end the half.

After half time, we couldn’t quite exert sustained pressure, and conceded two more penalties, one of which Staunton sent wide. Finally we set up a good attacking position. Sisa bullocked forward to give us some momentum, Charlie made a half break and a gap opened up for Chris Bell to score. With the conversion successful and the score 16-15, we had our noses ahead for the first time in the match. Although Tigers pushed hard, and we occasionally rode our luck, for example when a clearance was charged down, they couldn’t pinch a try and their only reward was another Staunton penalty. Tigers then tried hard to kill the game, kicking a couple of penalties for the corners, and camping in our 22 for long periods, but our defence held out. As time ran out, we had a couple of attempts to nick the win, first through Charlie, standing deep as if to drop a goal, but accelerating right and almost putting Miller through and finally, at the death, Charlie fired a long range drop goal attempt just wide. Finally, the clock reached zero, Tigers snaffled the ball in midfield and banged it into touch for a narrow win.

Positives- lots for me. A good, entertaining game, with great commitment from both sides, this was one of the best Sale performances I’ve seen for quite some time. A decent crowd responded well to the occasion, and there was a good atmosphere. On the pitch, our young front row stood up well, I felt our centre pairing of Bell and Tonetti looked good, with both of them putting in excellent defensive performances, and the Peel/Charlie combo also seemed to be working smoothly. We’ve a few things to work on, though, because we seemed to leak penalties and clearly had throwing problems at the lineout. I was struck at the end by the contrast between the teams- Tigers’ body language saying “Bloody Hell, that was a close one!” and ours saying “We could’ve won that”. Hopefully, this is a foundation we can build on for the last part of the season.

Man of the match- none for me; I thought they were all great last night.