It gets better and better. That’s three on the bounce, now.
Despite the absence of a good helping of thick, gloopy mud, we got a very entertaining game (again). I was a bit worried that playing on something other than a non-Newtonian liquid surface would hand a bit of an advantage back to the Luffbruff players, and, for fifteen minutes or so, it seemed that that would be the case. It took that long for Sale to wake up, by which time, Luggbrugg were fourteen points ahead.
But then Sale started to assert themselves, eventually pulling the Lobro defence in enough to spin the ball wide to Rhona Lloyd, who scored in the corner. And from there it stayed pretty even for the rest of the half, with just a penalty given away to make the halftime score 5-17.
There must have been some serious rocket/fundament application events during the break, because Sale came out with renewed vigour and intent. So much so that, within ten minutes, they had negated the twelve-point deficit through tries from Jarrell-Searcy and Cokayne.
Lupbrup retook the lead a few minutes later, but, on the hour, Katie Childs bundled over the line to bring it back to level pegging.
Ten minutes after that, Gwen Pyrs reached out a big fist to ground the ball on the line, Lizzy Duffy popped over the conversion, and Sale now had a seven-point lead again.
Then, with five minutes to go, Loffbroff pulled five points back with a try out wide, but missed the conversion.
This being a Sale Sharks team, we now had to endure five minutes of squeaky bum time. Shades of Bristol away a few weeks back, as they tried to run down the clock by stuffing it up the jumper – crucially, within penalty kick range. Back then, they gave up the penalty and lost by a single point. With that in mind, we were all screaming for them to “kick the bloody thing downfield”. But they held on, with the crowd watching the referee’s left arm, waiting for it to stick out…
… But it didn’t, and Holly Aitchison finally booted the ball out into Whitehall Road.
That win moved us up to sixth place, three points behind Trailfinders and six behind Harlequins. We’ve got Leicester away next and, at the risk of jinxing things, coming away from that without the full five points and a distinctly improved points difference cannot be considered. After that, the return match against Bristol (also the last chance to see them at home this season). I would hope that we’ll get revenge for that earlier defeat.
So, we have a good chance of getting nine or ten points from the next two games. That just leaves the last two, away to Exeter and Sarries. We could get something from Exeter (their only win of last season was at Sandy Park), but I really don’t expect much from Sarries.
Being generous, we could get another ten to twelve points this season. That’s not likely to be enough to get into the playoffs, but it would be a more than decent return from a season of major change, and would exceed my benchmark for a successful season by some margin.
an old grey dog 