Dear Whaley,

Thank you for your Christmas letter. I’m afraid I have video evidence that you are not wholly innocent in the flamenco incident and there is also the small matter of trying to buy a small Caribbean island on your work expenses, so I don’t think you have been very good at all this year. Anyway, the sleigh has been grounded by fog at Heathrow airport so it’s certainly not going to happen at the Bath game. I’ve arranged for a very cold, rather misty evening.

We’ll start with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, three or four scrums, a couple of knock-ons, two or three wayward kicks and a missed penalty kick for each side. Then we’ll move on to a Chris Bell half break, a minor punch-up, a maul that’s so slow it appears to have frozen solid and then I’m going to pick on Daniel Larrachea who’ll send a cross-kick just a bit too long so it goes into touch, then miss a drop goal.

You’ll continue to give away penalties and eventually Chris Malone will kick one. Then it’ll go on- Ben Foden half break, messing around at the set scrum, a Bath high kick and another Larrachea drop goal wide. You’ll get it together with Robbo running a restart back, drives around the fringe by Bonner-Evans and Martens and finally an equalising penalty. That’ll take you to 25 minutes and a core body temperature of below 35°C.

Bath will have a good spell now, stringing together several phases of back play, a couple of offloads in the tackle and putting you under real pressure for the first time. Your defence will cope well and you’ll actually push them backwards, although you’ll give away a penalty in front of the posts to go 6-3 down just before the half hour. Then it’ll all happen again, but this time I’ll arrange a yellow card for Seabass as well and you’ll be 9-3 down with 6 minutes of the first half to play. Bath will really go for it now, shoving you off your own ball at an attacking scrum and kicking for the corner.

But, just when you think you are really on the rack, I’ll let the Bath defender mess up a high kick, and give Chris Bell a soft bounce, let him break the first line of defence and outrun the cover to run in in front of a knot of Sale fans and ground the ball under the posts, taking a 9-10 lead on the stroke of half time.

This’ll really annoy Bath so you’ll have to start the second half with one of your last-ditch defensive efforts. You’ll hold out and, right on your line, the ball will pop out on the Sale side, a quick flick to Chris Mayor, and he’ll be off 80 metres up the field only to be caught by some last gasp defence. I’ll give you a couple more penalties for a 9-16 lead as well. Bath will miss a penalty and, with just about an hour gone, you’ll start to think you might win this.

But this is where you pay for being a bad Shark all year. I’ll let Bath push back hard and kick two penalties. You’ll start to feel less confident, so I’ll give you some more hope by making Chris Malone miss a sitter of a penalty and letting you work well downfield before you knock on. Bath will come back and I’ll give them a long-range drop goal with two minutes to go, gift wrapped and wafted over the bar by the breath of my elves. Then, I’ll give you the ball and let your forwards try and work Lee Thomas into drop goal range but you won’t make it before the ball goes dead and the referee blows up.

So, Whaley, you’d better be a good boy next year or there’ll be lots more of the same!

Yours truly,

Santa

There you are- the sins of the Whaley Shark have come back to haunt us. It was a pretty scruffy game. Bath probably did a bit more than us in attack but our defence was immense at times so I am not sure either side really deserved to win it. Our man of the match- I don’t really know, probably all the forwards collectively because, as usual, they fought to the very end.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

SPORTNETWORK SPECIALS

• Think you know your sport? Click here to try the Sportnetwork Prize Quizzes