Four down, three to go…
By ’eck, that were brutal. Proper hard-fought, no-quarter, tooth-and-nail rugby with flashes of brilliance thrown in. Add to the mix a teaspoon of niggle for a bit of extra spice and you’ve got a cracking evening’s entertainment.
The scoreline might suggest that this was a rare match of relative comfort for Sale supporters. Nah, it’s just that the squeaky-bum time came much earlier: the start of the second half, to be precise.
Apart from a penalty goal after about sixty minutes, all the scoring in this game was done in the first half hour. Being 22-7 up at half time was all very nice, but this was Saracens we were playing. It was vitally important not to let them score next, and definitely not within the first ten to fifteen minutes of the second half. That they came out from the break, obviously intent on doing both, made for some tense watching for… oh, about thirty-five minutes.
I’ll admit that I was expecting a close, low-scoring game – 22-20 or so, with the result being decided by a conversion here or there – so it was a welcome surprise when Ricky (Rikki? Riki? How are we spelling that?) opened the scoring with less than two minutes on the clock.
Sale’s backline play over the last few games has been almost unrecognisable compared to pre-Six Nations games. We’ve seen a lot more awareness between players to be in the right place to continue a move, or to see a gap in the defence and change the direction of attack to exploit it.
For this one, it was Fordy suckering Itoje into biting on Tom Curry, sneaking through the gap and offloading to Arron, who shipped it on to Ricky for the score.
Five minutes in, Fordy converted a penalty to take us eight points ahead.
By now, Sarries were starting to show signs of getting back into it with a few serious forays into the Sale half, and it was from one of these attacks that Sale extended their lead again.
Call it the Joe and Roe Show…
Joe gathered a speculative kick-through and passed it out to Buck, who screamed down the right touchline, passing it back inside to Joe, who got tackled. But there was Buck to pluck the ball from Joe’s hands, making another ten metres before handing the ball off to Fordy, who sprinted the last twenty metres unopposed to score under the posts. Fifteen-nil and Sarries were looking a bit shell-shocked.
But not nearly as shocked as they were ten minutes later when Itoje fumbled the ball and Sale nicked it. What followed will join Asher’s bull-in-a-china-shop run from last week on a permanent loop.
Imagine you’re a fly-half: your team has just recovered the ball and now you’ve got it on your own five-metre line. Obviously, you kick the leather off the ball to get it as far downfield as possible and relieve the pressure.
Right?
What you don’t do is spin it twenty metres left to your winger, who’s on his own with a small gap and a ninety-five-metre run ahead of him, do you?
No, you don’t…
…Unless your name is George Ford and the guy who’s screaming for the ball out on the left wing is Arron Reed.
Picture it now: a quick step inside before darting to the outside, leaving Tomkins swiping at thin air and Earl just a spectator. Curve back inside and around a flailing Hall before skinning Daly on the outside to leave yourself with forty metres to the line and everybody else on the field in your wake.
Magnificent.
Saracens did finally get it together enough for Hall to go over on the half-hour mark, bringing the score to 22-7.
And that was (almost) it for the scoring as the game entered phase 2: beast mode.
There’s not a lot to say about the second half, other than THUD, CRASH, BOOM, WALLOP, SMACK and RUMBLE.
Sarries came out from the break intent on breaking down Sale’s defence. Sale’s defence, on the other hand, wasn’t for breaking.
So we got forty minutes of seismic thud and blunder, interspersed with a solitary penalty goal and An Incident™.
Look, refs make mistakes. The best refs own up to them on the field, apologise and get on with the game.
Yes, the mistake cost us a clear-cut try, and, yes, that would have given us a bonus point that could have come in very handy over the next three rounds. But if you’re prepared to blame Christophe Ridley when we fail to make second place by a single point, then maybe reflect on this:
We scored three tries in twenty-five minutes, and nothing for fifty-five. That should not have been the only opportunity to get the extra point in that game. And also consider the three other games where we scored three tries but failed to secure the bonus point.
Or the five games where we failed to get anything at all.
If you really want someone to blame for the tightness of our situation, I’d suggest pointing the finger at whichever bonehead decided that scheduling one single round of the Premiership at a time when it was known that clubs would be without their England players was a good idea. Given that the whole point of suspending the Premiership during the Six Nations was to avoid that exact situation, the decision to play one round in isolation defies belief.
But also, consider this: in a way, we actually have an extra bonus point. It’s called ‘games won’. Let’s say we finish level on points with Leicester behind Bath: then we take second place and the home tie (because we’d have to beat them in the next round to do that, meaning that they would then be two wins behind us).
So, yeah, it was a blot on a fantastic match, but I’m not going to get upset about it. Much, much more important than a dropped BP in this game is winning the next one. At the moment, we’re looking at Schrödinger’s second place, in that our chances of getting a home semi-final are in a superposition of ‘entirely possible’ and ‘extremely unlikely’. The wave function will collapse in two weeks at Natalie Woods Welford Road: beat Tigers and second is entirely possible; lose, and I can’t see it happening.
Once again, I feel that singling out anyone for special mention is to ignore the contribution of everyone else, so let’s say up front that, once again, this was a team performance. You don’t get results like that unless everyone is pulling their weight and more.
That said… Curry gets a mention for not taking any nonsense from Itoje (and for being awesome again), Asher saw off Carre and was a nuisance around the pitch. I know we’ve got two Currys, but does Ernie have a twin that we haven’t noticed? It’s the only explanation…
Ben Bamber continues to grow into his role. I was very impressed with how he put himself about. And, of course, J-L. Dear old J-L; we’re going to miss him.
Gus, for me, has improved immensely since he has cut back on the box-kicking. Now that we seem to be using kicks as specific weapons, rather than putting one up because it’s been three phases and we haven’t scored, the attack has become much more fluid. There’s a noticeable improvement in the accuracy of passes as well as the awareness to be in the right position to receive the ball. Over the past few games, the backs have looked much more fluid and much more threatening (exemplified by Ford’s try).
Ma’asi-White now looks like the real deal. Last season and earlier in this, I felt his approach was a bit diffident, almost apologetic. But, since the Toulouse game, he seems to have found an inner confidence.
And, of course, Arron. The Need For Speed. Are you watching, Gregor?
So, we get a week off for the European semi-finals, and then it’s the Big One. The Crunch. Leicester on a Friday night. Lose, and suddenly Bristol, Gloucester, and Sarries become an immediate threat; win, and the world is the mollusc of your choice.
SAMP™ has us winning 25-20 on the five-year trend and narrowly losing 22-20 on the ten-year.
It’s going to be tight, it’s going to be bruising. It could well be the squeakiest of squeaky bum games. Wherever you’re watching it, stay safe.
an old grey dog 