Sale Sharks 33 Worcester Warriors 27

By Whaley Shark
December 31 2012

 Apologies for the delayed report. It’s not shock at a win in the AP, but the day job has rather got in the way.

Well, this match had been billed (again) as a season-decider. Hopefully, the dramas of Toulon and Wycombe would be in the past, Mr Mitchell would be working his magic, and we’d manage only our second league win of the season….

It didn’t look that way 15 minutes in, after Andy Goode had slotted three penalties and we’d barely got into the Worcester half, never mind threatened their try line. However, after a further wobble, which saw us almost concede a try, we got a grip and a bit of a lucky break. A Worcester lineout on our ten metre line wasn’t straight, we broke to their ten metre line from the scrum, won a penalty and put it into touch then, from the lineout Cillian Willis almost wriggled over, before finally Richie Grey made it. 

Worcester’s response was pretty rapid though. Just five minutes later, they built steady pressure in our 22, went through the phases and Neil Best crossed. With the conversion, we were nine points adrift again but we seemed to have relaxed a bit and, after ten minutes of trading blows fairly evenly, Worcester, with a man in the bin knocked on. We won a penalty at the scrum, kicked for touch, and spun the ball right from the lineout to put James Gaskell over in the last significant action of the half.

A Goode penalty just after half time gave Worcester a 19-14 advantage, then they lost another man to the bin and gave us two penalties, to put us in the lead for the first time in the game. That lasted only a few minutes before another Andy Goode penalty gave Worcester the lead again, after a previous attempt went wide. We finally regained the lead, which we were to retain for the rest of the match, just on the hour when we turned over the ball, Tom Brady made a break into the Worcester 22 and we ran the ball quickly left for Mark Cueto to score.

After ten scoreless minutes, Worcester gave us two more kickable penalties and, at 33-22 with five minutes to go, it really looked as if we might win comfortably. But no, this is Sale Sharks after all, and Worcester really started to chase a try to secure the losing bonus. They kicked a penalty for the corner and, from the resulting lineout, bulldozed a maul over in the corner. Fortunately, the conversion went wide to give us just a little breathing space, and we were able to secure the win.

Of course, with the delay in producing this report, the win has rather been lost in the song and dance about Mitchell’s departure. Personally, I have no idea if he’s made much difference but we desperately need stability, both on and off the pitch, in my view. I dare say things’ll become clearer over the next few weeks, though I am not sure we really need a month of fairly meaningless cup matches after the Saracens game. Maybe the breathing space will give us stability and let us gel; maybe it’ll just be a distraction. We’ll see………