Sale Sharks 29 Northampton Saints 21
By Whaley Shark
September 24 2011
So I said in my season preview that I’d be content with ten points from the six AP games we play in the World Cup period. Three games in, we have nine points, four coming from last week’s excellent win at Wasps, and tonight it’s Saints at EP. I’m just beginning to wonder if I need to know how you make Humble Pie.....
On the basis of the first quarter, no I didn’t. Some rather imprecise play gave Saints a steady stream of penalties, and Steven Myler's accurate kicking saw us 9-0 down. We finally established a position on the Saints’ 22 and Nick Macleod got us off the mark. Saints then put us under prolonged pressure, winning a penalty ten metres out and choosing to scrummage. After a couple of resets, Dwayne Peel was sin-binned, but our 14 men held out. Although we couldn’t really break Saints’ stranglehold, a fine scrambling defence, a couple of Saints errors and one or two lucky breaks kept them out, and they finally settled for a penalty from our ten metre line. Nick Macleod replied a few minutes later, and that was pretty much it for the first half.
The second half continued in a similar vein, with Saints scoring two more penalties to our one and, at 18-9, I was just starting to feel that this match was getting away from us. We were losing the penalties game and, while we’d shown something in attack, we hadn’t been able to string things together well enough to threaten the Saints try line. But we kept plugging away, finally getting a break as we charged down an attempted clearance and the ball bobbled into touch deep in the Saints’ 22. The ball went loose at the lineout, Dave Seymour pinched it and set up a good position from which Mark Easter went over. Even though the conversion went wide, we were right back in it at 18-14, with just over 20 minutes to play.
That really seemed to get our tails up and we began to play with a bit more adventure. A block on Joaquin Tuculet, running from in our own 22, saw Calum Clark binned. That penalty set us up with a lineout on the Saints’ 22 and, although we lost control, Saints were penalised at the resulting scrum and their captain, Phil Dowson joined his teammate in the bin. We took the three points to make it a one point game. Although they faced seven or eight minutes with just 13 players, Saints weren’t going to lie down, and some loose play gave them a scrum on our 22. Their six man scrummage crumbled, we won the ball and broke down to their 22. We knocked on, but their scrum failed again and they were only able to scramble the ball into touch. It was fairly routine from there- win the lineout, roll the maul forward, sucking in the defence, then let Dwayne Peel nip over for 22-18 and the lead, for the first time in the match.
We gave Saints another penalty after that and, at 22-21 with eight minutes to go, this was starting to look like another London Irish nailbiter. But we’d saved the best for the end. Saints fired a high kick deep into our 22, the back three switched it across the pitch and Rob Miller broke out, reaching the Saints 22 before being stopped. Slick recycling almost put Joaquin Tuculet through but, as he was held by the last defender, he slid the ball to the supporting Dave Seymour, who crossed near the posts. With the conversion, we had five minutes to go and a two score cushion, and started to look a bit safer. That, indeed, was it, effectively, Saints had one more flurry, but we kicked the ball deep and some good chasing ensured that we bottled them up in their half for the rest of the game. So that was an amazing comeback, a three tries to nil win, the first time since God-knows-when that we’ve won three on the trot in the Premiership, and 13 points from four matches. Anyone know a good recipe for Humble Pie?
What to say? Was it a supreme piece of strategy and confidence, playing at a pace and in a style which we knew they wouldn’t cope with over 80 minutes, not worrying when they got ahead but waiting patiently to reap our reward in the last quarter? I’m inclined to think it was. We seemed to keep the ball in hand much more than Saints, who resorted to the bomb often enough to make me think I was watching us from a year or two back, and when we really started to stretch them, we found gaps. We showed commitment, pace, imagination, improvisation and I was really delighted to see it. I was also astonished at the improvements in the scrum from Irish a fortnight ago, and it’s great to see a competitive lineout too. These may all be basic ingredients of the game, but it’s been a while since we’ve had them on display at EP. It was also good to see the team cope with a 10 who perhaps didn’t have his best ever day at the office. So well done coaches, players and all at EP. I am a seriously happy bunny. Man of the match- Dave Seymour, the openside I could have been (in my dreams!)