Sale Sharks 20 Bath 29

George Ford kills us off
By Whaley Shark
September 7 2014

Well, my father always used to say “Scores in the first ten minutes don’t mean anything”. I think he’d have admitted he was wrong today, though.        

 

 

We were completely suckered by Bath at the very start- a quick cross kick was well taken by wing Anthony Watson, who galloped gratefully down the left to score and put us a converted try down in under two minutes. That seemed to put us on the back foot and, a few minutes later, we were only saved from going further behind by a TMO decision. Bath retained the upper hand for the first quarter of the match but only picked up a further three points. We finally spluttered into life when the Bath lock, Day, flattened Danny Cipriani late and was binned. Once he’d recovered his composure, Danny slotted the penalty to get us off the mark. Bath picked up another three-pointer almost straight away, and finally we got up a head of steam. A forward rampage down the left set us up with a five metre scrum, from which some slick hands put Mark Jennings over for a try. With the conversion and an exchange of penalties, that took us to half time at 13-16.

We started the second half brightly, putting the Bath line under immediate pressure before knocking on and letting them off the hook. There was then a prolonged period of Bath ascendancy which went unrewarded, thanks to some imprecise play, a misfiring lineout and some moments of indiscipline. Finally, though, Joe Ford slotted a penalty from half way to take the score to 13-19.

The Bath pressure continued, with us largely unable to break out of our half. That pressure was finally relieved by a stroke of luck, as a cleverly struck Danny Cipriani clearance deflected into touch off a Bath player who was trying to control it with his feet to give us an attacking lineout. The forwards battered their way to the Bath line and, eventually, over it, with the TMO giving the try. Danny got the extra two points to give us the narrowest of leads- 20-19 with 13 minutes still to play.

We were rather brighter for the next few minutes, with Tom Arscott, on for the injured Mark Cueto, breaking deep into Bath territory through a ragged Bath defence and, for a wonderful moment looking as if he’d put Michael Paterson over, before play was called back for a forward pass. That was really our last serious attack of the match, as the Bath 10, George Ford, acted as magnet for our defence on the half way line, slipping the ball to winger Rokoduguni as three Sale defenders closed in. His try, with the conversion, took the score to 20-26 and we seemed to feel that a losing bonus point would do us. However, that wasn’t to be as George Ford hit yet another long range penalty to give Bath a nine point lead. As time ran out, we spent the last four minutes with possession, but bottled up between the ten metre lines by a controlled Bath defence.

Sooooo, what to make of all that? It’s a little difficult to know without understanding how good Bath are- my feeling is that they will be a strong top half side this season and we should perhaps not be too despondent yet. But, while I felt our forwards went quite well, I thought our back play lacked much penetration and without the usual Sam and Jonny double act in the centres, maybe we couldn’t do the battering ram thing either. That must be a concern because, if we’re overly dependent on our forwards, then we’ll be very predictable and easy to play against. The loss to injury of Dan Braid and Mark Cueto is also a worry because I think both are important to us, and we can’t afford to leak penalties in the way we did when the opposition have a kicker like George Ford. Still, it’s only Gloucester away next week, hurting badly from their Friday night battering at Franklin’s Gardens, so it’ll all be fine….. Off the field, the attendance, pretty much the same as the equivalent game last season, has to be a worry, so there’s plenty work to do there as well.