Sale 40 Harlequins 11

By John Braide
May 12 2002

With Gloucester just one point below Sale and likely to get five points against Leeds, Sale needed four tries to secure 2nd place in the league table. Quins held on strongly in the first half but Sale turned on the style after the break with a display of champagne rugby!

For the first 20 minutes possession and territory all went Quins' way although Sale's defence held up well so quins did not really threaten until Scott Lines was penalised for holding. Paul Burke kicked an easy three points.

Sale's response was immediate and deadly, the ball passed to Mark Cueto who deftly chipped it over the defence and recovered it to score on his right wing. Charlie converted to bring the score to 7-3 where it remained until half time. One try down, three to go and frankly it was not looking positive.

Oh ye of little faith. After the break Sale stepped on the gas and a try by Mel Deane soon resulted, converted by Charlie. Unfortunately Kevin Yates gave away a penalty, kicked by Mark Mapletoft to bring the score to 14-6.

Sale's defence lapsed, allowing Matt Moore to score a well worked try. Matt is fondly remembered at Sale and his try was warmly applauded by the Birtles. Excellent tries from Mark Cueto, Charlie and Charl Marais followed. Charlie, who was highly influential in the tries, converted each one.

Knowing our second place was assured and being royally entertained the atmosphere became carnival like. Sale were putting on an excellent end of season display and then Jos picked up a loose ball and sprinted 60 yards to score on the left wing. After that mad dash let nobody question his speed again! Charlie missed the conversion but what the heck, he'd had a stormer and the final whistle blew to cement the score at 40-11. The whole squad, not just today's players did a lap of honour to round off their league season.

OK, we were slow off the mark and mistakes were made and lessons learned, but we are still on the steep learning curve which bodes well for the future. Twelve months ago who would have predicted that that little northern rugby outpost Sale would be in the top half of the table, let alone second? Congratulations to all concerned. Further good news is that Charlie was declared man of the match and there was a capacity crowd of 5678.

Sale team: Robinson, Cueto, Baxendell, Deane (Going, 72), Elliott, Hodgson, Redpath (Dickens, 76), Yates (Black, 49), Titterrell (Marais, 61), Turner (Stewart, 65), Lines (Giacheri, 71), Jones, Sanderson, Pinkerton, Anglesea (Wilks, 61).

Harlequins: Gollings, Jewell, Bell, Greenstock, Moore (Slemen, 71), Burke (Mapletoft, 46), Powell (Duncombe, 30), Leonard (Starr, 62), Tiatia (Fuga, 46), Douglas, Codling, Davison, Winters, White-Cooper, Diprose.