I may have been a bit previous last week when I suggested that we’d maybe got over the habit of going in at halftime well ahead and blowing it in the second half.
For twenty minutes there, after Newcastle had clawed back twelve of a sixteen-point deficit, it looked like we were back in the bad old days of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
That we eventually finished with an eighteen-point margin looks encouraging. But it’s a bit concerning that we didn’t break through until Newcastle went down to fourteen men in the 75th minute.
It was bad enough that they went ahead less than three minutes after kickoff. The try came from a neat move, skilfully executed, but Sale’s defence was a bit sloppy that early in the game. Fortunately, it was way wide out left and Thomas wasn’t able to add the extras.
But, then, neither was Rob when Reedy scored in a similar position ten minutes later.
Having been stung by that early score, Sale slowly started to assert themselves. From a five-metre line-out on the right, the ball went left to Roebuck, who poked a kick behind the full-back for Reedy to chase on to.
Five-all ten minutes in and Sale were starting to flex their muscles a bit, Harper being just held up over the line from another promising attack.
But Newcastle were not there to roll over and be trampled on. Despite the youth and relative inexperience of the team (to be honest, I only recognised Chick on their whole teamsheet), they fought hard and well. Halfway into the half, they got their reward with a try by Chick from a line-out that resulted from too many penalties (again).
Thomas missed the conversion but now Newcastle were ahead for the second (and, as it happened, last) time.
The lead lasted about five minutes before Ben Curry bullied his way over the line following a series of rucks. Rob kicked the conversion to push Sale ahead for the first time.
Three minutes later, Dan put big brother Rob through under the sticks to increase the lead to nine points. And five minutes after that, Reedy carved his way through the Falcons’ defence to put us sixteen points ahead at 26–10.
So far, so good. We spent the interval discussing cricket scores and healthy points differences, and whether there should be a bonus point for every four tries (i.e. two BPs for eight tries, etc.).
And then the second half happened…
To be fair, Newcastle’s third try was a masterful piece of misdirection and a real sucker punch that they probably won’t get away with again. With the maul stopped, a couple of players broke away to the open side, dragging a couple of Sale defenders with them. Meanwhile, the guy who was actually holding the ball – Byrne – peeled off round the blindside and over. Gus nearly held him up but there was too little of Gus and too much of Byrne to stop him from grounding the ball.
OK, fair do’s, a cute move, well-worked try; give them the credit and respond in kind. Not cough the ball up and watch as they kick through, gather on the follow-up and score under the posts.
That score could be put down to a bit of bad/good fortune – on another day the ball could have bounced away, rather than into Stephens’s arms – but it still left us only four points ahead with twenty-five minutes to go.
Twenty of those minutes were spent trying to wrest the initiative back, with a couple of minor scares and a lot of kick tennis along the way. With about ten minutes to go, Sale pitched camp on the Falcons’ line, with the scrum now really asserting some dominance.
Then Ollie Spencer was binned for what looked like kicking the ball away after a penalty had been awarded. Cue another five-metre scrum and a quick pass to Sam James, who waltzed through a huge gap in the defence. The conversion was successful, and a much healthier eleven-point lead with only a couple of minutes to go.
I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “There’s time for another one, here” but not really expecting it. So, when Roebuck collected a kick-through thirty metres out and danced past a flailing Falcons defence, I must admit to a certain amount of smug self-satisfaction. Having already missed one conversion and two penalties (one of them a trademark bounce off the ironwork that led indirectly to James’s try), Rob made easy work of probably the most difficult kick of the evening to finish the game fourteen points better off than we had been five minutes previously.
Let’s put in a word of praise here for Newcastle: the final score may have looked like a bit of a thumping but they played well and ferociously for the whole match. One of their tries may have been the luck of the bounce but the other three weren’t. I think they should look at this performance with some satisfaction and certainly with hope for the future.
As for Sale, you could think that being outscored twelve-nil for thirty-five minutes of the second half was a result of going to sleep or resting on the first-half performance and, at the time, it seemed that way. On watching again, though, I don’t think there was any major performance drop-off from the first half. We got sucker-punched by a cute move and then hit with a somewhat flukey follow-up a couple of minutes later.
But at no point in that thirty-five minutes were we particularly under the cosh. Their third try came after a bit of pressure on our line, and there was a minor panic down in the right-hand corner, which Gus dealt with admirably, but that was about it for the Newcastle threat.
Apparently, there is a point to all the kicktennis, or so we’re told by the pundits (and they should know…). It seems to me that the point is to waste a couple of minutes getting a scrum or lineout forty metres out, whereas a more direct approach of carrying and keeping the ball in hand often results in a penalty twenty metres out. Or am I being naïve?
Anyway, whatever the rationale, one thing that a kicking duel does achieve is to keep the ball in midfield, which may explain why we went nearly twenty minutes after their fourth try without putting much pressure on their line. It was only when Rob’s penalty attempt bounced back infield off the crossbar and Ben Curry, following up magnificently, forced the mistake that we started the sequence that led to Sam’s try. Would we have scored that without the card? Probably, but the sixth one might not have come at the end.
But to talk too much about the kicking is to ignore a lot of really good and inventive backs play. Joe C was noticeable for making several mazy runs through the Newcastle defence. Also, five of Sale’s six tries were well-worked moves that opened up the defence, with only one an attritional try-line slugfest.
Reedy looks to have addressed most of the criticisms of his play from last season – mostly in defence – and is now looking a much more rounded player. Five tries in the last three games says a lot and it may be that O’Flats has his work cut out getting back into the starting fifteen.
So, on to next week and a real test of our mettle. The Bath of this season are unrecognisable from the team of the past several seasons. How much of that is the signing of Finn Russell and how much is down to improved coaching can be debated but the fact remains that they are the biggest threat yet to an unbeaten home run that goes back thirteen months.
The SAMP™ prediction has it close…
| SAMP–5 | Sale 20 – 23 Bath |
| SAMP–10 | Sale 23 – 21 Bath |
It’s going to need a step up from this performance to hold them out.
Fortunately, I think we have the capacity to make that step.
an old grey dog 