Never in doubt: at no point during the course of that match did I so much as entertain the merest hint of a possibility that we would somehow conspire to royally bugger it up.
I mean, it’s not like we’ve got form up there is it? I remember a game two or three seasons back where we’d marched out to a healthy lead by somewhere deep in the second half, then threw it away.
No win in eight years (although we would have won the cancelled one, for definite). That’s a heck of a monkey to carry into such an important game. And, let’s face it, they looked nervy the whole game. Except for the build-up to Rob’s try, the fluidity of the previous two games was missing.
For the first ten minutes or so, Falcons seemed to have the bulk of the possession but it was all in their own half. I kept expecting Sale to turn over the ball and go on the rampage, given the territorial advantage they had. But no, Newcastle kept the ball, Sale started their annoying trick of ceding the initiative by giving away silly penalties and we began to lose ground.
I made a note at about the twelve-minute mark that says “All seems a bit cagey”. That seemed to be the theme of Sale’s play for the rest of the match.
Then we got the first heart-stopping moment: I was expecting a red and was thankful that the referee considered a side-step by Obatoyinbo sufficient mitigation to downgrade it to yellow. You’re a lucky boy, James…
[As an aside, we’ve had this law/interpretation that’s supposedly designed to change player behaviour in the tackle for (mumble) years now. It’s not working, is it?]
Then, guess what? Penalty, line out, repel, penalty, line out, repel, penalty …
… Intercept, clear lines, set up an attack, get turned over, penalty, line out, penalty, warning …
I thought I’d accidentally put last week’s match on replay.
But we survived. A scrum just before the end of the sin-bin brought Willgriff onto the pitch – for the rest of the game, it turned out, since Harper failed an HIA – Sale finally got the benefit of a penalty and there we were, five metres out from the Falcons’ line. Could we make a better fist of the opportunity than they did?
Yep.
Much deeper into the match and on the opposite side, Ben Curry repeated his score of the previous week, flopping over from a maul that went one way, whilst he went the other. George kicked the tricky conversion with aplomb and I hoped this would signal them calming things down and starting to take control.
And there were signs that that was happening. Three minutes later, we were back in the Newcastle red zone, Manu waltzed through the defensive line like it was a bead curtain and handed off to Carps who scored beside the posts. Fourteen-nil up (and, for the first time in fourteen matches, with a non-negative points difference), we were looking a bit more secure.
Until…
Penalty, line out, maul, repel try. Worryingly easily scored, too. The maul defence went completely AWOL on that one.
Eventually, the ref blew the whistle on what ended up as a fifty-three-minute half. Time to regroup and get ready to come out reinvigorated and take the game by the scruff—
—and there’s the equalising score. Good grief. Calm down. Relax. Have a drink (Omnipollo export stout – very nice). There’s still twenty-eight minutes to go; plenty of time to…
… Fortunately, Sale only made us wait five minutes before they turned over a Falcons’ scrum on the Newcastle five-metre line and LCD barged his way over to restore a seven-point lead.
Shortly after, Rob tried to run around the Newcastle defence but was bundled into touch just short of the line. We were seven points up but still looking a bit out of sorts and only had fifteen minutes to get the bonus-point try that we needed to keep in touch with Quins and Bristol and to stay ahead of Exeter.
Then, with ten minutes to go, we got it. From line-out a few metres out, Blamire stripped the ball from LCD but it fell nicely for Gus, who popped it off to George, got it back and then sold a lovely dummy before putting it into the hands of Roebuck who came steaming in for the score under the posts.
Back to a fourteen-point lead, less than ten minutes left, surely it was in the bag now? Another score to make the season’s points difference positive would be nice, but the important thing now was to hold on to the five league points.
Then, with five minutes to go, we got the play of the match. Like a tornado winding its way through a Kansas wheat field, Sale ran, passed, offloaded and recycled their way from their own ten-metre line, culminating in Rob running through a non-existent defence for try number five.
The game won, five points secured, the only thing under threat was the plus-seven-point points difference in the table. Give Newcastle their due, they came back at Sale for the last couple of minutes and Radwan went agonisingly close, but was just held up over the line with the clock showing time up.
Let’s face it, there are two reasons that this game will be remembered in the future: that it was a five-point win when nothing less was acceptable and that it broke an eight-year hoodoo. It was not a great spectacle: the team did not reach the fluency of the Exeter and Quins games. Overall, a welcome win but not much more than that.
Job done; next!
And next comes Leicester at home. Things look hopeful here, we’ve won the last five home games against them and seven of the previous ten. The SAMP™ prediction is for a comfortable victory.
| SAMP-5 | Sale 34 – 10 Leicester |
| SAMP-10 | Sale 31 – 21 Leicester |
Let’s assume a five-point win – less than that and we’re more or less out of it, anyway, so there’s no point in speculating. That puts us on 52 points.
Bath and Northampton play Newcastle away and Gloucester at home respectively, so I expect them to get five points each, taking them to 55 and 60 points. They are top and second, we’re third (so far).
But the interesting speculation comes with the other two games and their significance to our position and chances. Bristol have Sarries at home and Quins go away to Exeter.
Exeter can’t catch us this round, but they could stay close enough to overtake us next round if they beat Quins, which is a result I wouldn’t bet against. Let’s assume Exeter win; that keeps them below us, breathing down our necks. If Quins win, they go above us, but we should be safe from Exeter.
Then there’s Bristol against Saracens. Does anyone want to call that? It could go either way. If Sarries win, they go second and we drop to fourth, but with Bristol joining the pack behind us. If Bristol win, they go third and Sarries either go above us (if they get two bonus points) or join the following pack.
And then, looking at the final round, we have the intriguing possibility of 1st against 2nd, 3rd against 4th, 5th against 6th, 7th against 8th and 9th against 10th.
The upshot is, I think, that we need to win both games to get into the playoffs. Even if we beat Leicester, we could still end up 7th. Lose to Leicester and— well, at least we can’t go lower than 8th.
an old grey dog 