Sale Sharks 12 Harlequins 27

Brady goes over
By Whaley Shark
April 12 2014

Well, last night we saw what a prospective top four side could do against a rather overachieving mid-table team, and it was quite a lesson.

But we started brightly, with a lovely piece of Danny Cipriani improvisation, looping round to create an overlap, then slipping the ball to Tom Arscott, who committed the last defender, and gave Tom Brady just enough room to dive over in the corner.

It was pretty much all Quins for the next hour though. Their first try came from a rare defensive lapse. Nick Evans dodged through our defensive line 35 metres out and outpaced the cover defence to score. “I didn’t think Evans was very quick” said my disgruntled neighbour- nor, clearly, did our defenders.

With the conversion, then a penalty two minutes later, Quins were starting to pull away from us, and they opened the gap further a few minutes later. They made good ground from a quickly taken lineout deep in their half, battered their way into our 22 and, after two or three quick phases, Danny Care nipped over from the base of a ruck. Quins continued to dominate until half time, but there was no further score.

They monopolised the early part of the second half too. One penalty took them from their ten metre line to ours, several phases of possession took them to our 22, another penalty gave them a lineout ten metres out, yet another penalty took them to just five metres short. Three phases of play sucked our defence into the centre and created enough room for left wing Sam Smith to beat two defenders and score.

At 20-5 down with half an hour to go, we finally decided to play a bit. A neat chip from Danny Cipriani set Sam Tuitupou and Johnny Leota free and, while they couldn’t quite outwit the Quins cover, Danny produced a neat cross kick from the ruck which sadly didn’t quite go to hand. Just minutes later, Dwayne Peel took a quick penalty to take us into the Quins 22, Sam made a half break and Tom Brady finished in the right corner. Or so we thought- the try was ruled out for a fumbling knock on at the start of the final move. Those disappointments seemed to deflate us and, with Quins happy to keep us at arm’s length, the game degenerated into stalemate.

As the clock ran down, Chris Robshaw broke a tackle, found himself in space and set up another attack which took Quins to within five metres, allowing replacement Maurie Fa'asavalu to score the bonus point try under the posts. At 27-5 with eight minutes to go, the game was clearly beyond us but we had one last sustained assault on Quins’ line. We set up a succession of five metre lineouts, with Quins keeping us out only by infringing. After the second penalty, they lost Charlie Matthews to the sinbin and after the fourth, Wayne Barnes gave us a penalty try. With the conversion, the final 27-12 score was a bit more respectable, but Quins thoroughly deserved to head south with five points.

The thing that struck me most about Quins was the pace at which they played- fast recycling, slick offloading, quick lineouts, a defensive line speed that Usain Bolt would envy, and we struggled to live with them for long periods. All in all, it was quite an exhibition. The problem we had was a pretty impenetrable Quins defence and, if we kicked over or through, the prospect of Mike Brown bringing the ball straight back at us. Damned if we did, damned if we didn’t. I suspect we might have done a bit better if Dan Braid had been available but there’s no point in pondering what might have been. It’s nice to be looking upward towards the higher reaches of the table, but we could really do with stuffing Exeter away next week. Fingers crossed!