Sorry, Newcastle. There are teams I’d rather see struggling but we need the points and we need the score margin.
I’ll admit to not feeling confident before kick-off – we’ve thrown away too many good positions against the Falcons for that. Also, last year’s match was tight until about fifteen minutes from the end, when we pulled away. Up until then, though, Newcastle had matched us and even got a try bonus for their troubles.
So, no, a wounded, out-of-form Newcastle was not likely to be an easy win.
Especially with Dimes in charge…
I felt more sanguine about the match five minutes in when Arron picked up a bouncing cross-kick off his laces and skinned the last defender to score in the corner. Rob kicked the touchline conversion and we were off.
But then, for about fifteen minutes, Newcastle had a bit of a purple patch and managed to dominate possession and territory without ever being really threatening. It almost had the feel of a defensive training session for Sale, who just absorbed everything that the Falcons threw at them.
Newcastle were sadly uninventive in trying to break down the Sale defence – even a simple tactic like “get it to Radwan” seemed beyond their ability. To be fair, they are working without a recognised fly half, so I expect things to improve once they have a full squad to pick from and once Dimes has had a chance to impose his stamp on the team.
Anyway, they huffed and puffed and pulled back a penalty but couldn’t blow Sale’s house down. Then, twenty minutes in, Reedy struck again. Carps got the ball in Sale’s half and decided to run it. He chipped it over a defender, collected on the bounce and gave a cheeky overhead offload to Reedy, who then bamboozled Radwan by ducking inside and burning everyone on his way to the line.
A bit over five minutes later, Callum Chick pulled a Sale maul down over the line and earned a ten-minute rest for his troubles, as well as conceding the penalty try, since LCD would have definitely scored. Then, five minutes before halftime, Addison punched his way through a porous defence to score the bonus point try and take us into the break 28-3 up.
The second half was, as second halves often are, a slightly more subdued affair. Four minutes in, Bedders broke through the Falcons’ defence and gave a gorgeous back-of-the-hand pop pass to BC, who curled a long, looping pass into Roebs’s hands out wide. The resultant try was inevitable. Another touch-line conversion from Rob and things were looking grim for Newcastle.
Five minutes later, in a semi-reversal of the earlier event, Chick scored for Falcons and Dickie went binwards for coming in at the side.
Tom Curtis kicked a penalty after fifty-five minutes but then nothing much happened apart from lots of substitutions until about ten minutes before the end. That was when we got—for me—the try of the evening. Rob lifted a kick out wide and Roebs burgled the ball out of Stevenson’s grasp, fell over, got up again and dived over the line for number six.
And that was about it. Oh, except that we spent the last seven minutes down a man because Ben Curry went off and we had no replacements left.
And there we have it: ten points from ten and a positive points difference restored (let’s see if we can keep it).
Carps was the player of the match but it could have been Ben Curry, or Tom Curry, or Bamber, or Roebs or any one of several others. I’m happy for Carps as he had a bit of a stinker the week before and this was much more the kind of performance from him that we’ve come to expect.
I don’t see how Tom Roebuck can have done his England chances any harm over the last few games: his aerial threat is now quite significant and you can’t doubt his ability to finish.
Likewise, Arron seems focused on staying on Townsend’s radar, with a much-improved defence to go with his attacking pace.
From two games that we were expected to win to two that we, frankly, aren’t. First up is Northampton away. Last season, we lost a game that we could and should have won. I watched their game last weekend and they are not the team that finished top last year. If we can be the Sale of those last half-dozen games from back then, then I think we have the beating of them. That said, they’ll probably choose this week to rediscover their form…
SAMP™ has mixed opinions:
| Northampton | Sale | |
|---|---|---|
| SAMP-5 | 22 | 24 |
| SAMP-10 | 30 | 20 |
We’re five points ahead of them in the table. Let’s see if we can make that at least nine.
an old grey dog 