Sometimes, I think I could probably get away with having a generic boilerplate report and just fill in the name of the opposition and the score.
Blah, blah, penalties, blah, blah, giving the initiative away, blah, blah, blah…
That’s about it, isn’t it?
Given the disparity between the Harlequins of rounds one and two, and the Harlequins that came to Salford, you might be forgiven for concluding that they rely far too heavily on having a fit Marcus Smith available.
Whether that is the case or not, he was the difference for the first ten minutes or so, as Quins came out of the blocks as if they had a rocket up their bums. Sale looked a bit bewildered by the ferocity of Quins’ start and ended up leaving huge holes in the defence, which Quins exploited mercilessly. Fortunately, Smith had left his kicking boots in the changing room, so we were only ten points down.
Only ten points… 🙄
After that initial double whammy, the defence seemed to get its act together and Harlequins weren’t able to make inroads with quite the alacrity that they had in the opening minutes. The damage had been done, by this time, though.
But Sale came back into it and, within five minutes, had pulled the deficit back to three with a well-worked try from Elia Canakaivata, following some decent interplay in the backs and a bit of bullying by the forwards.
Unfortunately, Quins restored their lead a few minutes later with Smith’s second try and its conversion.
It was all starting to look very ominous…
Gus darted through a hole in the defence three minutes before half time to restore a bit of respectability to the scoreline, but we were all still feeling pretty low at what was a, frankly, sub-standard performance.
Spirits sank lower ten minutes into the second half, when Quins scored their bonus-point try to go ten points up again. This was getting familiar…
Halfway into the half, Ben Bamber carried a couple of Quins defenders over the line to once again reduce the deficit to three.
Then, with less than ten minutes to go, the get-out-of-jail-free card: a good driving maul brought down a couple of metres from the line. A yellow card and a penalty try and, for the first time, we were ahead.
I won’t detail the almost comedic dithering around at a scrum, occasioned by Quins having to lose another man because of going to uncontested scrums, followed by more confusion as they needed yet another replacement, because you have to have a fully qualified front row, even for uncontested scrums.
For the second match in a row, Sale played the stuffing it up the jumper game to wind down the clock and get a welcome, if probably undeserved, win.
A win’s a win, for a’ that. As many have pointed out, we’d have lost that game last season – badly. For now, I’ll take a couple of scrappy wins whilst the team sorts itself out.
For now.
Good shifts from Jibs, Ben Bamber and Elia Canakaivatu. A bit of a mixed bag elsewhere: Reedy butchering a gift-wrapped chance, lines missed, too many penalties. With Glasgow coming to Salford next, the team’s going to have to sort itself out pretty smartish, or we could be in for a pasting.
But then, we thought that about Saracens…
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