Remind me again why we do this. For enjoyment? Because it’s… fun? “Fun” was a long way from being at the forefront of my concerns by about ten past three on Saturday.
It’s on afternoons like this that the difference between “waterproof” and “showerproof” is emphasised. To call it “wet” is to miss the perfect opportunity to use words like “soaked”, “sodden”, “saturated”, “dripping”, “dank” and “Biblical”. I’m sure I saw a family in the next field laying down a keel and rounding up the livestock.
They have quite a nice setup at Caldy – masses of parking space and, despite there only being one way in and out, it was remarkably quick to get away. There are at least two other rugby pitches and, of course, it’s also a cricket ground. The clubhouse/pavilion is nicely appointed, although you got the impression that they were used to slightly smaller crowds.
A bit of meaningful cover would have been nice, though. Even Heywood Road has covered stands, albeit some of the leaks in the Birtles’ roof have been there so long they now have names like “Gusher” and “Old Faithful”.
But you’re here because you want me to tell you what the game was like, aren’t you? Who did what? Who excelled? Did anyone have a mare?
Buggered if I know. Between the forest of umbrellas and a pair of glasses covered in rain, all I could see were black blobs and turquoise blobs moving backwards and forwards on a greenish background.
For most of the first half, the blobs were over to my right. The second half was a bit more even, with the blobs moving from over to the left across to the right and back again.
The turquoise blobs touched down twice in the first half. Then, soon after the restart, another turquoise blob scored. This rallied the black blobs, who quickly pulled one back. Then there was lots of huffing and puffing — up to the point where we were all going “Surely it’s full time now” — when another turquoise blob scored and the referee put us all out of our immediate misery. Then we went home.
OK, OK, you want details…
Sale dominated the first half. Any forays out of the Caldy red zone were few and usually the result of Sale giving up a penalty. I don’t have a breakdown by half, but overall match stats of 63% possession and 77% territory start to tell the tale. Given that the second half was much more even, I wouldn’t be surprised if those stats were approaching 90% for the first half.
All of which makes it a little bit frustrating that all we managed for that first-half pressure was two tries by Jean-Luc and a Gus Warr conversion.
Hang on… a Gus Warr conversion? What about Rob? He was playing, wasn’t he?
Yep, he was out there, but Gus was taking the conversions and SamJ was taking the kicks to touch. We thought that maybe Rob had one of those injuries that stopped you from kicking, but he took the final conversion after Gus had been replaced by Raffi, so not that. Maybe we’re just trying to increase the pool of players who can step up to take place kicks if needed – that would make sense to me: you’ve got George and Rob, but it would be nice to know that a couple of other guys had the confidence to take over the duties if those two were unable for any reason.
Similarly, putting O’Flats at fullback when we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Luke and Joe yet. Are they crocked? Or are we again looking at options…
It’s probably Axe being inscrutable.
Or ineffable. Summat like that, anyway.
Enough speculating, back to the action. You have to hand it to the Caldy defence: they stood their ground and held against a relentless battering for the whole match – 144 tackles to 68. Fair play to them, that was a hell of a shift they put in.
After Dugdale aquaplaned over for Sale’s third try, Caldy upped their game even more and, a few minutes later, fly half Lewis Barker popped a neat little kick over Sale’s defensive line. It sat up nicely for centre Connor Wilkinson to run in under the posts and bring the score to a respectable 7–17.
And that was pretty much it until the stroke of full-time, when Ben Bamber got the bonus try and Rob converted.
On the one hand, this was a decent win in horrible conditions; on the other hand, it was a hard-fought defensive effort by Caldy in horrible conditions, and on the gripping hand, it was a Sale team that still looks some way off of the side that was so dominant in the league last season.
I will put this one down to the conditions (did I mention it was raining?) and the still somewhat experimental nature of the side that went out there. I’m going to assume that the coaching team are using these five games to try out a few things ahead of the season proper and that, when it comes down to it, we’ll see a return to the sort of performance that we now expect.
The conditions proved to be a great leveller as far as performances go, but it was good to see Dan du Preez back and seemingly firing on all cylinders. O’Flats looked good under the high ball, but he’s not really a full back and I don’t expect to see him there much come the important stuff.
I thought Nathan Langdon acquitted himself well. Here’s hoping he comes good and alleviates the loss of his brother to some extent.
Ampthill next: will we experiment a bit more or go for as close to a Premiership team as possible? Either way, I hope it sets us up to hit the ground running against Northampton the week after. Given we have Leicester and Exeter both away in the following two weeks, I think we really need to start with a good win at home.
Getting nervous now…
an old grey dog 
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