Swimming with the Sharks

By BrianC
October 29 2003

This Friday sees us traveling away to Sale for what is both our first evening game of the season and our first appearance in front of the Sky TV cameras. Sale moved to Edgley Park, home of Stockport County FC, in the close season it, will be the first time we have played there.

Sale Sharks vs London Irish

Friday 31st October, Edgley Park, K.O. 7.45 pm.

We are now a third of the way through the ZP campaign and find ourselves, to the surprise of most pundits sitting 5th in the table. Sale are but one point behind us and are currently 7th. Sales performances thus far this season thus far have been patchy. All three of their loses have been narrow ones, at home to Wasps and Bath and away at Newcastle. They have managed two impressive away wins against Leicester and Quins but only managed a fourteen point margin at Rotherham a couple of weeks ago. They have not yet managed a home win at their new ground.

Last season Sale did the double over us, (I feel like I've written that a lot this season). Our 36 - 14 thrashing in the same fixture last October was so bad that we voted 'The Referee'  MOTM. When they played us at the Madstad in February we lost 11 - 23, this was a somewhat better performance by us, the score was 11 - 11 after 78 minutes.

Sale have lost a few players to RWC call ups, most noticibly Billy Whizz a.k.a. Jason Robinson. It is difficult to say how much his loss has been detrimental to their performances thus far this season. Suffice it to say that I am happier to be facing them without rather than with him. That said we will find ourselves facing Braam (the boot) Van Straaten at fly half. Those of you who were at Leeds last season will not need reminding that he destroyed us, nine from nine on the penalty front, one being a full 55M out, he also added two conversions. Sale have always had a good mobile pack and Cairns and Sheridan give extra bulk. It will be in the forwards that Fridays game will be won or lost.

In the first half of last weekends game Rotherham exposed our hitherto tight defense. Our indiscipline also cost us dear, if we give away another thirteen penalties this week we will lose this game. One would expect that Gary and Paul will be looking at these areas of weakness this week. Here's hoping they can go some way to resolving them. Injuries permitting I would expect to see a similar team taking the field next week to that of our previous matches. The knock that Tofty took on Sunday did not sound good, we can thank our lucky stars that we have someone as talented as Barry to cover the no. 10 position.

According to a poll on the Sale site 62% of respondents are predicting that they will win their Edgley Park duck against us this Friday. It would be nice if we could dissappoint them, I feel we can.