New season, new kit, new faces; same old squeaky bum time.
Trudging through the rain to the tram station should have given me the first hint that the afternoon was not going to be serving up a feast of fast, free-flowing rugby. And then, at the stadium and with over an hour to go, only a few hardy souls were braving the outside concessions: most had chosen to go inside where the cover was.
We really do need a wet-weather solution for the area where the tent used to be. It’s simply not tenable to hope it doesn’t rain on match days. Mind you, with the stadium now owned by Salford council, will there be the will – or the resources – to make the sort of changes that Simon and Ged had in mind? I have a horrible feeling that the match day experience is going to get worse, and it won’t be the club’s fault – although they’ll probably get it in the neck.
Case in point: one of the things I was looking forward to after the long break was wrapping my gob around a chicken balti pie, only to find that the pies are no longer the Angie-approved delights of last season but an insipid travesty that I won’t be bothering with again.
On the plus side, though, the pizza van was there so at least I had a bloody good slice of pepperoni 🍕.
So we ended up mooching about in the south stand for an hour, protected from the rain if not the wind. Then a game of rugby happened and we went home. THE END.
…
No – seriously – thirty men chased an oval ball around the pitch for eighty minutes and then we went home.
…
You’re going to want me to say something about the events of the game, aren’t you? Ai-ai-ai. Give me a minute…
Let’s face it: it was not a great game. It was a performance that was definitely less than the sum of its parts. But before we go all, “typical bloody Sale; flatter to deceive; can’t see us getting above sixth this season” (and you know there are some who live to be disappointed), let’s reflect on a few salient facts.
- We won. Narrowly, yes, but we won.
- Harlequins – those much-vaunted purveyors of exciting, running rugby – looked just as bogged down and clueless as we did. Maybe conditions had even more of an effect than it seemed.
- We won.
And there were positives: the line out functioned perfectly (after the Newcastle pre-season game, I was a bit concerned). The scrum looked good, despite a couple of dodgy calls (that was never hinging for the first one: the Quins tighthead’s body was a straight line from toes to shoulder – talk about over-extending). To see Asher putting one over the second-best young England loosehead was very encouraging. Ben Curry continues to call into question the sanity of the England selectors.
Look, it was a crappy day, both teams were poor but, somehow, that will only reflect badly on Sale in the minds of the media and the general fanbase. There are nineteen more games to go: it’s a long way to the prize in June.
That said, we’re going to have to improve a thousand per cent if we’re to stand a chance of repeating last season’s success at the StoneX.
Unsurprisingly, SAMP™ has a gloomy prediction
| Saracens | Sale | |
|---|---|---|
| SAMP-5 | 27 | 21 |
| SAMP-10 | 31 | 18 |
I’d like to think that there will be a reaction to the underperformance of Sunday and that we can kick on and show the rest of the country that we’re not to be taken lightly. My head says that we’ll narrowly lose a game that we had several chances to win. In other words, back to normal.
Let’s hope that next week’s report is me admitting to an unwarranted lack of faith…
an old grey dog 