Sale Sharks 30 London Irish 29

By Whaley Shark
September 11 2011

 The signings and the hype are largely out of the way, preseason’s over, the ‘friendly’ games have been played, and we got down to business last weekend with a loss at Worcester. So what’s really going on with the Diamond revolution? Our first home Premiership match against London Irish should give us some idea........ 

And we started really brightly, stealing the very first Irish lineout, winning a penalty and putting it into touch on the Irish 10 metre line. We won that lineout, then Dwayne Peel ducked and dived his way to the Irish 22, the ball was recycled and Peel wrong-footed the defence by coming back to the blindside, fed the supporting Rob Miller, who drew the last defender and set up Henry Thomas for a simple run-in. With a conversion off the post, we were 7-0 up after just four minutes. After a pretty even spell, where our scrum was tested for the first time in the match, and seemed to creak disturbingly, Irish got off the mark with a penalty. A few minutes later, our scrum conceded a penalty on the Irish 10 metre line, Irish kicked to touch, and set up a series of forward drives which eventually saw David Paice cross for a converted try. We hit back immediately, as Irish messed up our restart, Lee Imiolek tidied up and James Gaskell scored near the posts. With the conversion, we ended the first quarter 14-10 ahead.

After an exchange of penalties, we knocked on at a restart, the dominant Irish scrum gave them a bit of momentum and Irish worked the ball left to Jonathan Joseph, who beat a tackler on the left and ran in a straightforward try to put us behind for the first time. We made things worse with an error at the restart, which gave Irish a scrum centre, they mashed us again and won a penalty, which they kicked from long range to go 23-17 ahead.

Still, we recovered some equilibrium, with Joaquin Tuculet, on the left wing, gathering a deep kick from London Irish, running back at them, then causing havoc with a delicate chip, which he regathered to set up a position on the Irish 22. Dwayne Peel then chipped towards the corner, but the timing was just out and Tuculet couldn’t quite gather it. Irish relieved the pressure from the resulting lineout. However, we rebuilt a good position and the half ended with us kicking another penalty. At 20-23 and still very much in the game, there was a lot of half time debate about how the next 40 minutes would turn out.

We continued to struggle in the scrum in the second half, conceding another kickable penalty after ten minutes, before the front row was stiffened by a couple of replacements. However, Irish lost the ball as they pressured our 22, and we broke away down the left, set up a good attacking position, and Dwayne Peel nipped over for a fine try. With the conversion, we had regained the lead, but only by a single point. Irish had a spell of strong pressure, which we resisted well, with Andrew Higgins running the restart back to make good ground, and some brave moments from Rob Miller at full back being particularly notable. Our new improved scrum came good too. Mark Easter peeled off the back of a scrum on our ten metre line, fed Dwayne Peel, who was typically elusive and then worked the ball on to Rob Miller, who got us to the Irish ten metre line, where Irish infringed. Rob Miller kicked the penalty to take us four points ahead.

After some midfield skirmishing, Irish kicked a penalty to touch, setting up an attacking lineout 15 metres from our line. We nicked the ball and relieved the pressure, but Irish continued to press. Eventually, with three minutes left, they won a penalty on our 22 which they chose to kick. I don’t know why- maybe they didn’t trust their lineout, or maybe they thought they’d get another chance to nick it but, whatever the reason, they never got another scoring chance and we ended 30-29 winners.

I thought it was a good game, in some ways a throwback to before the 2006 Championship win. There was a sense of spontaneity and heads-up rugby, although we could have perhaps done with a bit less spontaneity in the defending. That will hopefully come with time. The scrum’s obviously a problem, but a functioning lineout’s a bonus- maybe you can only ever have one or the other? You’d hope time and some world cup returners would help there. I was fairly pessimistic in my season preview, and I still retain the view that 10 AP points will be a decent performance over the first six rounds, but this game must have given the side confidence. However much bonding has gone on, I can imagine that deep down, the players must have felt ‘We’re a new, inexperienced side, loads of us are away, and the Premiership’s an unforgiving competition’. All completely true, but now they can say ‘We’re good enough to win games in the Prem and, as we settle and people come back, we’ll be a threat to anyone’. So hopefully, they’ll stick my prediction where the sun doesn’t shine....

Oh, and Man of the Match- only one choice, Dwayne Peel, but an honourable mention for Henry Thomas as well, for his try, for sticking a full 80 in a struggling scrum, and for quite a lot of the ‘down and dirty’ stuff too.

PS Thanks to John Everton for factual correction