Shark Roast served up at Sandy Park
Sandy Park
By ExTeddChief
March 5 2012
ExTeddChiefs takes great pleasure in reviewing Exeter Chiefs biggest win in the Premiership (to date)
Shark Roast served up at Sandy Park
Chiefs 37 Sharks 12
It had been a while. Due mainly to austerity measures enforced by a little trip to Paris I’ll be taking in April, I had deprived myself of trips to Sandy Park for the whole of February. Now, finally I was able to get my hands on and keep a Chiefs ticket and it looked to be an interesting one.
Sale were a side you had to give a lot of credit to, caught up in the relegation scramble last season, this time around they were in the same midtable mixer as us. In fact they came down here level on points with us only ahead of them on match points. 6th vs 7th. Plenty of big names in their squad and on current form they were looking like a try scoring machine. Yet we’d already beaten them at their place. So, round to grandparents for lunch then meet up with a certain individual on the way to the bus stop then on to a fairly chocka 78, complete with older guys who’d already been on the booze. So we get to Sandy Park relatively early, satisfy Big Chief with our noise levels, and then, time to rumble.
We were clearly in no mood to hang around, Sale weren’t really given the opportunity to get going, Chiefs flung some passes about and Dollman ran over for our first try. Mieres then added a pen soon after. So far, pretty impressive. Our possibly future Argie international then grabbed three more with the Sale scrum clearly not able to handle things and a second Chiefs try was pretty much inevitable. Tui went over the line, ref didn’t give a try, gave us a scrum instead and after three takes Richie charged through and us in the NWT went appropriately nuts! Mieres converted.
After that...well, Sale finally got their act together in terms of challenging us but well...they’re meant to be a try machine. If that is so they were clearly a try machine that Rob and the guys were well prepared for. Awesome display of defensive rugby from the Chiefs who came in at half time with a clean sheet.
So, half time, grandfather and I grab a hotter than expected(for him) coffee and well, awesome was the only way to describe the first half, nearest comparison I could come up with was Quins’ visit last season. Still, the teams come back out and we’re off to the West Stand for the second half! Chiefs certainly had no intention of taking their foot off the pedal either and the result was inevitable. Sale were caught on the hop with a tap penalty, a few passes later and Sesteret got his first try of the season. Rob then went on to curse ref Dean Richards when Richie got binned for reasons no one was sure about but it didn’t seem to make much difference. The Chiefs held out and we were off down the other end again with Sale unable to stop Jess from running in with a try, Mieres converting.
Before the end Muldowny and was the next guy to get ranted at by Rob for getting suckled into the breakdown too often. In the meantime Sale seemed to be raising the white flag with the nature of their substitutions However the Chiefs were now slipping into cruise mode much to Rob’s annoyance and their complacency allowed Luther Burrell to get a try. Then Ben White got binned and the visitors struck again, Tony Buckley getting the try, Nick McCloud the conversion.
Under Rob’s urging though, the Chiefs finished the game on the front foot, the Sale scrum was unable to hack it and we secured a penalty try right at the end, Steeno converting.
Job done and done pretty amazingly. 5th place in the Premiership and just five games to go?
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