Attempt number four to write something coherent about a complex reaction to this game and to the season so far.
I’m having trouble expressing an internal conflict without appearing either happy-clappy or doomy-gloomy.
On the one hand, we’re flying high, we’ve just beaten the reigning champions, and we have players tearing up the stats. All seems good; bring on Twickenham.
And yet…
I remarked a few weeks ago that there seemed to be a fragility about our position – a sense that the wins we have are ‘despite’ rather than ‘because of’ – if that makes any sense.
And yet…
We’ve won seven of nine (🤔…). You don’t do that without being a bit good.
And yet…
We have one of the worst red zone conversion rates in the league. We have a negative points difference!
What is going on?
In a pre-match interview, Gus mentioned that the team seemed to be playing at 80%, which I think every fan would agree with. The question is: why are we still playing at 80% halfway into the season? What is it that’s gumming up the works?
We’re winning, because we’re good enough to win, but we’re making a meal of it because we’re not playing at full potential. If we’re playing at 80%, then we’d have to be more than 25% better than everyone else to make up for it. We’re obviously not, so arguably we’ve only won so many because of factors like home advantage (five of those seven wins) or because we’ve played a team that we are more than 25% better than.
The flip side to that is that the second half of the season sees those home advantage wins reversed – we have to travel to Saints, Bath, and Sarries. Exeter and Quins are the only visitors to Salford of those teams currently in a position to damage our league standing. Plus we only have four home games compared with five away in the second half. And three of those away games are on plastic pitches.
We’re going to have to find that missing 20% or it could all go to pot.
And it has to start at Northampton. A win there could give a significant boost to our league position: for a start, Saints are one point behind us, so it would open up a bit of a gap; Bath are away to Leicester – a game they could easily lose – so we could overtake them; Exeter are away to Bristol – I can’t call that one, but maybe Brizz can do us a favour. That just leaves Sarries and Quins as probable five-point winners. They could draw level on points but stay behind on the number of wins.
Lose, though, and potentially we drop down to fourth.
And, yes, I know I haven’t actually said anything about the match.
We won. It should have been a bigger margin and we should have scored the fourth try. Asher is a beast.
I can understand not using Tumy and Nye but we’ve got to trust them sometime. They both held their own against Leinster and I can’t help thinking that Nye (or Sam James) might have provided the necessary spark for a fourth try.
Saturday is going to be nerve-wracking and SAMP™ doesn’t provide much comfort.
| SAMP-5 | Northampton 31 – 24 Sale |
| SAMP-10 | Northampton 31 – 20 Sale |
I can’t wait…
an old grey dog 