Sale Sharks 19 Northampton Saints 6

By Whaley Shark
March 23 2014

At last, at last, some Sale rugby to talk about. Not only that, but a Saturday afternoon game against top-of-the table Saints. Before the game started, my prediction to my neighbours was, "Heart says Sale by three; head says happy with a losing bonus point", but this is how it actually turned out.

Saints got their noses in front in the early exchanges, with a penalty from our ten metre line, but then Dwayne Peel sneaked round the narrow side of a ruck and made 60 metres into the Northampton 22. Although he couldn’t get the ball to his support, we were able to recycle it quickly and shipped it out left for Mark Cueto to outflank the defence. With the difficult conversion, we were 7-3 ahead after ten minutes. Fifteen minutes of stalemate followed, before we gave Saints a second kickable penalty, which allowed them to narrow the gap to one point.

Then we hit our purple patch. From a scrum on our own 22, we cleared the ball deep upfield and a rotten bounce left Ben Foden flat-footed and gave us possession. In scrambling to keep us out, Saints gave us a penalty, which we put into touch. We got a roll on from the lineout, Saints took the maul down to give us another penalty and put that into touch to give us a 5 metre lineout. The forwards weren’t going to let the opportunity slip and, after a couple of bites at the cherry, Marc Jones crossed. In the brawl which followed, Sam Tuitupou and Dylan Hartley were both binned, though there were clearly no hard feelings as they chatted happily to each other on their walk of shame.

As the half time break loomed, Saints put a clearance straight out to give us a lineout on their 10 metre line. Several well-worked phases took us to the Saints’ 22, then Danny Cipriani slid a neat grubber kick through for Tom Brady to scoop up and score on the right. Danny then slotted the conversion to send us in 19-6 up at half time.

And that was it really- the weather deteriorated horribly and there was no score in the second half.

However, finishing the report like that would be grossly unfair to an exceptional Sale defensive performance. Almost all the second half was spent in Sale territory, quite a lot of it in our 22. Saints came perilously close on several occasions but there was an abundance of die-in-a-ditch defending which eventually forced them into pressure-relieving errors. I have never seen sustained defence like it, and it must say something about our organisation, commitment and discipline. Saints may have contributed to their own downfall by going for the corner on several occasions, rather than taking the three, but that was their choice.

So very much a game of two halves, and you could say we won both, in very different ways. I tried to rationalise my pre-game prediction as being “Sale by three tries to nil” but my neighbours weren’t having any of it. I was very wrong and am quite happy to have been so. We’ve got some tough games coming up in the next few weeks but, if we can keep going like this, we need fear nobody. I’m not going to pick a Man of the Match this week- all the performances were immense, so thanks guys, please keep it up.

While I’m rabbiting on, I thought the ‘matchday experience’ was good- there was more buzz around the ground than I recall previously. The marquee and screen added to the occasion and it felt about half full, one of the better crowds of the season but not startlingly better than our AP average, which is perhaps a shame given that Saints were the visitors. Whether one game is enough to make a judgement, I don’t know but quite a few positives and perhaps signs of Mr McKie’s influence?

Finally, to add to the debate, I do like Friday night but if we move to Saturday, 2.00 or 3.00 would work well for me because they fit with other things I need to do. Later on a Saturday afternoon, say 5 or 6 o’clock, would be trickier. Going home yesterday was a bit of a mare though, because the M60 was still jammed up by traffic heading into the Trafford Centre. I guess we’ll have to plump for one preferred day and time, and that’ll doubtless upset some people and delight others. We’ll find out soon enough.