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Leicester 35 Sale 23 report
By Whaley Shark September 5 2006
It is said that “Revenge is a dish best eaten cold”. On a sunny, early September afternoon, the Leicester Tigers dined on cold cuts of Shark. The Whaley Shark put his hands over his eyes, peeped through his fingers and watched feeding time…

There are some great, unchanging things about the city of Leicester- the fine products of Everard’s Brewery are one, and a pack of forwards who will grab you by the throat and strangle you to death if you give them half a chance is another. And that, really, is the story of my day out in Leicester.

It was obvious from the beginning that the Tigers wanted this one badly- steaming into tackles two-on-one, applying some early pressure and winning a straightforward penalty which Andy Goode somehow missed. Sale came back, pushed downfield and won a penalty which Charlie kicked to give us a 3-0 lead after 8 minutes. Then a long touchfinder from Charlie was helped over the dead ball line by the breeze and Leicester had a scrum 20 metres out. Moving the ball quickly, Geordan Murphy crossed to make it 7-3 to Leicester after 10 minutes. The teams are pretty even for the next few minutes but, when Jason Robinson gathers a Murphy grubber kick and just steps into touch, Leicester have another good attacking position and Louis Deacon scores on the right. The conversion is wide. We are 12-3 down after 20 minutes and it could be a long afternoon.

We seem to get on top a bit more now. Charlie kicks another penalty and a few minutes later a Leicester knock on from a box kick by Wiggy sets up a scrum on the Leicester 10 metre line. Ripol makes a half break, for once we get quick ball and Charlie dummies his way through to score. After some slick handling by Jason Robinson and Oriol Ripol, we pick up another penalty for a 4 point lead after 35 minutes and the Leicester crowd seem rather subdued. We keep the pressure on and the half ends with Leicester trapped in their 22 metre zone.

Right at the start of the second half, Charlie puts the ball into touch on the Sale 22. Leicester set up a rolling maul from the line out and roll right on over the try line for Martin Corry to touch down. They’re back in the lead before the taste of the half time oranges is even gone from our mouths. From the restart, we work downfield with some good handling, then float the ball wide to Bruno on the left, who powers over. We’re back ahead by 23 points to 19. At this stage, the Leicester forwards seem to be gaining the upper hand- our ball is slow, there are a couple of turnovers and the scrum is struggling. We leak a couple of penalties and Leicester take the lead. Leicester put us under sustained pressure, but then make an error and we try to push downfield from the scrum. The Leicester defence remains rock solid, though and we don’t make much progress. Charlie puts a high kick over the Leicester defence and Geordan Murphy takes it brilliantly at full speed.

The pressure continues to tell. Leicester kick a penalty, have one glance off the post and then miss a third, the last one conceded by Chris Jones who is sin binned. With only seven forwards, life gets very hard and Leicester push into the right hand corner. There is some desperate defending and we concede a penalty. Leicester choose the scrum and we crack. Leicester win a penalty try. We are now two scores behind with only a few minutes to go. We start to go for it in an effort to get at least a losing bonus point. Jason makes a fine break, Cuets is stopped cold a couple of yards out by a very brave tackle from Goode, we push and push but can’t get through and then that’s it. The Champions have been well beaten at Welford Road as, I suspect, quite a few other teams will be this season.

Leicester deserved this, no doubt about it, and I’d be interested to know how many Premiership sides could have lived with the Tigers in this mood. Honours were pretty even in the first half but once Leicester established dominance in the second half, our pack simply couldn’t cope with the continued pressure. How much of this was to do with the loss of Large Lobbe and Seabass at half time, I don’t know, and Jonesy’s sin-binning was probably the final straw. Martin Corry turned in a fantastic performance (can we have a Corry-cam some time, please?) and fully deserved man of the match. On the Sale side, Charlie was probably the outstanding player.

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