By Whaley Shark
October 5 2013

Well, I suppose this is my tenth anniversary Sale match, since the first game I came to was a 37-33 loss to Wasps at Edgeley Park on 10th October 2003, watched by 5803 spectators (take note), and it’s certainly been a bit of a roller-coaster since then. 

Anyway, last night was definitely one of the ups. I feel we saw a real team performance which demonstrated, yet again, the truth of the saying ‘Forwards win you matches; backs decide by how much’.  And we saw just how committed our forwards were almost straight away, as they turned over Bath possession and forged into the Bath 22 to win a penalty. Sadly it went wide, but it was some declaration of intent. Bath showed their teeth next, running the ball left and chipping over our defence, leaving Rob Miller no choice other than to run the ball into touch. Naughtiness at the lineout gave Bath a penalty attempt which also went astray. A Bath knock on then let us set up an attacking position and Danny Cipriani slotted a drop goal to get us off the mark. Bath responded well with a try on the right, sending winger Rokodoguni down the narrow side of a ruck and through some soft tackling. A few minutes later, Bath almost got over again, as we messed up a lineout, and Bath nicked the ball, but we were saved by the TMO, who saw a foot in touch. That gave us a defensive lineout and a couple of penalties to touch relieved the pressure. Our next score came from one of Mark Easter’s charges from the base of a scrum, feeding Andy Forsyth, who took us into the Bath 22. After several phases, Bath gave us a penalty, which took the score to 6-7 after 25 minutes.

Several lively Bath attacks over the next few minutes kept us under pressure, which was eventually relieved by a knock on and another Easter charge. A neat kick over the Bath defence set up a lineout on the Bath 22, a bit of battering ram forward play created space on the left and a neat pass from Mark Cueto outflanked the Bath defence to put Andy Forsyth over in the left corner. Danny Cipriani got the difficult conversion to put us 13-7 ahead. An exchange of penalties over the next five minutes ended the first half scoring so we turned round with a 16-10 lead.

Bath seemed rather more fired up after half time and set up shop on our 22, but we nicked the ball, cleared the pressure, and then the Bath scrum was penalised to set up a successful long range penalty for Danny Cipriani. For the next ten minutes, neither side could string a series of moves together but, Sale being Sale, we eventually gave them two penalty attempts in quick succession. George Ford sent the first one wide but made no mistake with the second to take the score to 19-13 with almost an hour played.

We were definitely second best now. A bit of desperate defence gave Bath another penalty attempt, which went wide, and saw Michael Paterson in the bin. Bath really turned the screws now, and we couldn’t quite break their stranglehold, losing one of our own scrums in our 22, kicking the ball straight out and, on occasions, keeping them out with some pretty desperate defensive work. As the clock ran down, we seemed to recover and maybe Bath started to force it a bit. We put a 40 metre penalty attempt wide and, as time ticked away, the game bogged down in an attritional midfield battle. Mark Cueto made good ground from a turnover to set up another penalty attempt, but our Ford hit the post with it and, although Bath tried to run from their own 22, they knocked on and brought the game to an end.

To sum up, I felt this was a very good win for us, with some lively back play. Cips got Man of the Match, which is fair enough (and it was nice to see genuinely warm applause for him when he was substituted just before the end), but it was a performance built on really gutsy forward play. There was some robust, well organised defence and obvious team spirit. I’m looking forward to the next ten years!