Sale Sharks 8 Leicester Tigers 20

By Whaley Shark
October 6 2012

 Predictably, ‘Played 5, Lost 5, 1 Point’ became ‘Played 6, Lost 6, 1 Point” last night but strangely I am not too despondent.

 

 

 

Because I thought a bit of comfort eating might be needed, I took a cake to last night’s game (lemon drizzle with lemon cream, since you ask, and so many lemons in it I count a slice as one of my five-a-day) and, if the match had truly turned into the horror show I was half expecting, I was just going to publish the recipe on here instead of a match report. But it wasn’t, so rugby, not recipes, is the order of the day.

And we started very brightly, compared with the lethargy of two weeks ago. You could see something was different from the way the forwards hit the first couple of rucks with real bite, and we pitched camp in the Tigers’ half from the off. The other thing that was clear from the off was just how formidable Tigers’ defence was going to be. We had a sequence of five or six phases, but made almost no ground before Nick Macleod chipped over to set up an attacking scrum. We knocked on and Tigers cleared to touch, but some quick thinking and a quick lineout allowed Will Addison and Mark Cueto to put Rob Miller over on the right after seven minutes.

The next ten minutes were pretty even, with an exchange of penalties, before some inventive play gave Tigers a scrum on our 22 from which they won an easily kickable penalty to close the gap. We continued brightly and, with Tigers having lost left wing Genova to the bin for a deliberate knock on, Nick prodded us up close to their line and, with seven minutes of the half to go, Will Addison crossed, but the TMO ruled the score out. We continued to pressurise the Tigers for the last few minutes of the half, but without any reward, and turned round 8-6 ahead, after perhaps the best half of rugby we’ve played this season.

The peculiar Dumplington aroma was more noticeable after half time- I wonder if we pipe it into the away dressing room- but it didn’t have the desired effect. Tigers pressed from the start to win a penalty on the 10 metre line and take the lead for the first time. They followed that up with a rolling maul from a lineout near our 22 and, as defenders were sucked in and we ran out of room, Youngs nipped down the narrow side to score on the right.

I got the feeling we started to run out of puff as time went on. We swapped Tony Buckley for Vadim Cobilas at 50 minutes but that didn’t change Tigers’ increasing dominance at scrum time and they picked up another penalty to take us outside losing bonus point range at 17-8 down. While we were still trying hard, we seemed to be less able to penetrate the Tigers’ defence, barring a sparky break down the right by substitute scrum half Nathan Fowlds, and a kick and chase by Will Addison which saw Tigers scrambling to get the ball away. Joe Ward came on for Tommy Taylor and turned in an interesting cameo, yellow carded just ten minutes later and giving the Tigers the last score of the match. A man down, we fought valiantly for the last seven minutes but there wasn’t any real prospect of the try we needed to salvage a bonus point and, with the clock showing full time, Tigers won a scrum against the head and that was that.

Even without the last few weeks’ poor performances, I think a 20-8 loss to Tigers would have been quite possible. Once they realised they were in a match, at about half time, the Tigers did enough to win, and I felt they always had a gear or two left if needed. We seemed to have a bit more ‘dog’ about our pack, with Mackenzie and Vernon doing a good deal of the ‘down and dirty’ stuff, and it was overall a much more committed performance than we’ve seen. Discipline is still an issue for us, but I have some hope we are heading in the right direction and performances like that will beat teams in the lower half of the table. My man of the match- Will Addison, just back from injury and putting himself about a bit.