I fear that this defeat may mark the final scuppering of the season for Sale. But let’s not blame this performance for that – look rather at a lack of bonus points and several earlier defeats that really should not have been.
You know, it’s getting increasingly difficult to write these reports (Reviews? Analyses? Blatherings?).
For one thing, I feel as if I’m simply repeating the same old points every time: silly penalties, imprecision, daft mistakes, etc, etc.
Also, it’s not a pleasure to write about defeat after defeat. What did the guys say on The Shark Tank? Eight defeats in the last ten games. Ten in twelve if you include the ‘friendlies’. It starts to grind you down; as a supporter, you want to be able to move on from a defeat. Having to revisit it to make some sense of it starts to wear after the third or fourth time. You may have noticed that I didn’t write anything about the Northampton friendly, even though I’d put something together about the Newcastle game the week before: I watched it, I made notes and I started writing …
… Two sentences in and I couldn’t do it. I needed a break from trying to come up with reasons for something that I can’t explain: how can such a talented team have hit such an extended bad patch?
And therein lies a potential pitfall: that inability to rationalise to my own satisfaction what may be going wrong leads to frustration, frustration leads to anger and anger leads to the dark side. I fear being tempted to say something that I wouldn’t want to say, to release that frustration in a tirade of blame-casting. And I don’t want to do that because (a) I’m not an arsehole1 and (b) anything I say is based on incomplete knowledge, which is fine when you’re just blithering on about a game, but bang out of order should things get personal.
I think what frustrates me most is that, for sixty-five minutes, we were in touch and in with a chance of getting the win. Then Russell popped over a drop goal to put Bath six points ahead and things seemed to go completely pear-shaped from then on.
Yes, it looked as if the referee missed a couple of forward passes and a knock-on. Maybe he even favoured Bath when dishing out penalties (no, he didn’t…) but he wasn’t responsible for the missed tackles, the dubious decisions, the inaccuracies…
The ref is also not responsible for Sale accruing only four bonus points in thirteen games.
To sum up: I saw a team that held its own for over sixty minutes, despite almost gifting the initiative at times. In that hour, I saw several glimpses of what could be: a coherent attack that was starting to look dangerous – Manu’s and Roebuck’s tries were glorious – but remained too much a curate’s egg. But I also saw a defence in tatters, a defence unrecognisable from the duck’s arse that we’ve been used to over the past few seasons.
It concerns me that we currently seem to be a team that is less than the sum of its parts.
I’ll finish on some bright notes: Bev slotted back in as if he hadn’t been away, Raffi is looking sharp, George has his kicking boots back and brought his renewed game management over from England duty. Manu scoring is always worth the money and seeing Reed, Roebuck and Carpenter gelling again is heartening.
But, that said, I no longer have any expectations for this season. To come out of it with anything other than a poorly-seeded Champions’ Cup spot would require a turnaround of such magnitude that youngsters now will be telling their grandchildren I was there.
I’ll continue to turn up; I’ll continue to hope – because that’s what supporters do, isn’t it?
I’ll hope, but not expect.
Let’s see what happens against Exeter, maybe they can inspire me to expect great things again.
SAMP™, however, suggests otherwise:
| SAMP-5 | Sale 21 – 23 Exeter |
| SAMP-10 | Sale 19 – 21 Exeter |
I never trusted it, anyway…
- Mostly. ↩︎
an old grey dog 