Tag: rugby

Posted in match reports

View from the armchair: Sale 31 Newcastle 16

Posted on by an old grey dog

Revenge can be sweet, especially in response to round two’s bore-fest that Falcons nicked in the dying minutes. By comparison, this was a competent performance that Sale never looked like losing. What it wasn’t, though, was exciting.

Well, OK, the first fifteen minutes were pretty good and the omens suggested a bit of a try-fest to come, with lots of enterprise from Sale and a couple of magic tries from Marland and Lood.

Never trust omens…

We were all expecting a second try bonus point after that early onslaught, but it was more than an hour before they recorded the third try. Four penalties in that time kept the scoreboard healthily in credit, so there was no repeat of last week’s rectal callisthenics, but neither was there anything to set the heart racing with anticipation, either.

In fact, sitting here writing this, I’m struggling to remember anything that happened in that 60-minute period between de Jager’s try and Matavesi giving Falcons a bit of hope before Hammers squashed it a couple of minutes later. I mean, the teams shared seven penalty goals (four for Sale, three for Newcastle) and WillGriff got himself binned (when will it sink in that clearing out a ruck by hurtling in from distance is not going to fly any more?), but there was nothing there to really stick in the mind other than an impression of a lot of back-and-forth and – once again – immense defending by Sale.

But, oh, those first fifteen minutes…

The foam had barely settled on my beer before Faf pulled out a near-mirror image of last week’s pass to Byron. This week, Marland was on the receiving end of a fizzer and danced neatly along the touchline to score in the left corner. AJ converted with a cracker of a touchline conversion.

Ten minutes later, it was time for AJ to produce a moment of magic. The ball went out to Josh on the right touchline, he passed it back to AJ who was immediately bundled into touch by a Falcons defender. It was what happened in the second before he went into touch that was the magic bit: you could see him look at his right foot, which was about to hit the touchline and balletically pull it back infield, simultaneously flicking a no-look pass behind his back into Lood’s massive paws. It was then just a matter of Lood sidestepping the defender and flopping over the line for the try. It would have been the icing on the cake if AJ could have converted but, alas, wide right is entirely the wrong spot for a right-footed kicker.

My notes for the next hour of the game are “gone a bit pedestrian after the tries”; “kicking duel”; “still a bit flat” and “good defence with 14 men”. Which, I think, pretty much sums it up.

The best entertainment was reserved for the last five – well, ten – minutes. Matavesi scored for Newcastle to bring them to eight points in arrears, but Sale almost immediately struck back with Marland feeding Hammers for a fairly simple score, which Rob duPreez converted.

That pretty much took us to full time, but Newcastle refused to give up, even though they couldn’t even get a losing bonus, being fifteen points down. There was some furious back-and-forth, during which Sale went oh, so close to getting the bonus point try, denied only by a wayward offload which gave the initiative back to Newcastle.

But then, four minutes past the eighty, knock-on and “that’s all folks”. Another good win, but the lack of try bonus points may do for us in the end, I fear. Four times this season we’ve scored three tries but failed to go that one extra. If we had converted those four threes into bonus points, we’d have the same number as Quins and be two points ahead of them instead of two points behind.

And that’s about it. I don’t really have much to add after this game that hasn’t been said before. Lood was awesome, Faf was sprightly, Marland still impresses, the defence is immense…

Northampton away will be a sterner test and more a measure of where this team currently is. Let’s see if I’m still thinking “not much to add” after that.

Posted in match reports

View from the armchair: Sale 22 Bath 27

Posted on by an old grey dog

Hindsight, they say, is 20–20. Mind you, a little foresight might also have suggested that replacing two-thirds of a winning team in one go might just be sub-optimal.

Not that I want to cast any aspersions on those players who did come in – or even on our esteemed DoR for making the changes. It just didn’t work; an outcome that was foreseeable, but not inevitable.

And, to be honest, I looked at the team selection when it was announced and my reaction was not “oh, no, we’re going to get thumped”. No, it was more along the lines of “that’s a pretty handy team” and relishing the novel concept that we can make ten changes to a side already lacking half a dozen key players and still field a team that ought to be able to compete.

No, the problem as I saw it was that all those changes disrupted some of the defensive cohesion. A gap here, a hesitation there; all because the instinctive understanding between players was not quite as good as those who have been more settled this season.

Couple that with a still-misfiring attack and some (cold- or inexperience- induced?) basic errors and you’ve got a recipe for going down to a team that has a point to prove, however badly they may been playing up till now.

That said, half as many changes – so the defence was a bit less porous – or a more confident attack and we’d have won that game. If Cliffy hadn’t put the ball out on the full in the first minute, we’d have won. If Doherty’s kick had been a bit better, we’d have won. If Faf had released the ball a millisecond earlier – so it went backwards behind his back, not forwards – we’d have won.

Lots of ifs, but the fates conspired against us on the night, and that’s all there is to it.

I’ll admit that, on the evening, I was feeling more than a bit glum, and was tending towards the “what a load of rubbish” viewpoint, but I still felt that there was something different here. There wasn’t quite that old sense of inevitability, rather a definite feeling of “we can still do this” on top of the resigned grumbling. Squeaky bum time, but for a different reason: “can we pull it back?” rather than “are we going to blow it?” Add to that that we still rescued a bonus point with a well-worked try at the death, and I don’t think that (after a couple of days’ reflection) this was as bad as it may at first have seemed. Think of it more as an experiment that didn’t quite work, but from which Axe will have learned a lot, as should most of the squad.

We also have to note that there are two considerations at play here: the long-term development of the squad (the whole squad, not just the principal players) and the immediate campaign.

I think that, as far as long-term development goes, this will have been a blip (if that) and a learning moment. It’s effect on the Premiership campaign is a bit more serious, though. Although we retain third place, that’s only by virtue of number of wins against the team that we have to play next. There are four teams who could, theoretically, go above us after next week’s games, and that’s a bit concerning, especially as we’ve got Exeter coming up north the week after.

We can afford ‘learning opportunities’ as long as they are rare and widely separated. That is, we need to give ourselves the best chance of beating Quins next week, but without appearing to heap blame on any of the rotated-in players. So, don’t just revert to the Bristol-beating team, but retain some of the rotation. For example, keep one of Roebuck or Doherty whilst making it absolutely clear to the other that his chance will come and that he’s not being singled out. Man-management: it’s what Axe is apparently renowned for, so let’s trust in him to learn the lesson and make better choices next time.

Still third despite no Lood, Rohan, Manu, Denny, Tom or Ben. I’m not worried.

Yet.