By Chris Chaplin
April 7 2003

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Hong Kong over the years and while I loved the food one delicacy I couldn’t develop a taste for was Shark’s Fin Soup. That is until Sunday when I enjoyed seeing Tigers mince up the Sale Sharks and hopefully help put them in the soup.

With Deano fielding his twenty-third combination of backs and half -backs this season I must say that as I settled to watch this first home game for two months I had more than a few butterflies, particularly when I saw Fred preferred at inside-centre to Gelderbloom, as I’ve never seen our Samoan Exocet play there before. In fact in the back division only Tom Tierney retained his place and position from the loss at Kingston Park.

In my preview I said that I hoped the Tigers’ game-plan was to concentrate on dominating the Sale forwards and that Stimmo and Geordan would be returned to their rightful positions with Oz starting at 10 - and so it came to pass.

In the first half Sale really didn’t get enough ball to give their talented backs a chance and I was also pleased to see that a policy had clearly been decided of not kicking the ball to Jason Robinson, so that it was not until well into the second half that we saw much of him and by that time he’d moved to the centre following Vaughan Going’s arrival to replace Dan Harris and a reshuffle taking place.

Oz belied his long absence and recent audition to join the Trumpton Fire Brigade by being bright and buzzing from the start, at times I thought he perhaps tried to force the game and was again too lateral at times, but he took his try well, kicked intelligently and with fair accuracy, as well as proving dogged in shrugging off a poor tackle by the Sale defence to score, of course he subsequently became the transgressor in similar circumstances by trying to dance with, rather than tackle, Dean Schofield, allowing the young lock to score Sale’s second try.

Obviously Oz hasn’t read or has forgotten the bit about tackling big men low. However his creativity certainly got this latest combination of backs moving and with a more creative player at inside-centre than Fred, who in an otherwise clear playing area unerringly locks on to the defender and goes into contact, even more could have been achieved. Clearly Oz felt the same as his continual use of the cut-out pass demonstrated.

The backs handling was much, much improved and the opening score, following a period of forward domination and that other latterly missing commodity; patience, saw Stimmo running a sublime line before feeding Geordan a beautiful ball which he in turn supplied to Oz for application of the coupe de grace. Although Stimmo’s kicking was not perfect his play coming from deep was out of the very top drawer and let’s hope that he is now properly restored at full-back.

My pick of the forwards was Martin Corry who, though notionally out of position at lock, had a superb game, although I think it fair to say that had he been at 8 the events leading to Sale’s first try may well have not unfolded as they did. However his part in the second Tigers’ try showed his versatility as he combined with Oz in some strong approach play to put Geordan over for a fine score.

In the third Tigers’ try we saw what we had been missing with Oz sidelined for so long as he picked out Geordan on the wing and although the kick was little heavy our Celtic flyer held on to it and after a little juggling popped it inside to Leon who had taken an excellent line at some pace. That pace very nearly was his undoing though as he failed to take the ball cleanly, but this was one of the days that Leon turned up, he also had a juggle, just to tighten the supporters’ Gluteus Maximus, before surging over to score what I believe was his 59th try for the club. Leon did have a good first half although he became somewhat anonymous in the second, which was a pretty dour affair compared to the deeds of derring do we saw in the first.

Up until now the Tigers’ forwards had pretty much neutralised the Sale pack’s efforts, especially around the fringes where Back had another fine, fine game although in the line-out Sale held their own until the latter stages when Charl Marais was sent on and proceeded to give the strangest display of throwing that I’ve seen for good while.

All was going well at 38 minutes with Tigers enjoying a 25 point lead with Sale not having laid a glove on them. An innocuous scrum was awarded to Tigers, an area where they had been secure all the half, on this occasion however the strike was sharp and Will Johnson failed to control the ball as it came back. Tierney was already under pressure from Redpath and the ball was turned over. The Sale backs struck quickly and it being turnover ball a less than ideal defensive alignment had been taken up by Tigers and the excellent Graeme Bond was able to avoid the cover and pop down a try which gave Baxendell an easy chance to convert.

Worse was to come, as direct from the kick off young Dean Schofield decided that what his colleague Jones could do so could he and he cantered down field, first avoiding and then out gassing Johnno before Oz waved at him like an effete hairdresser as the big Shark passed by before shooting over the Tigers’ line to score and give Baxendell another simple conversion. So in two short minutes a twenty-five point lead had been slashed.

The pulsating first period of play was not matched by the second when Tigers had clearly decided to put an end to all this Champagne rugby tomfoolery and secure five points. To be fair from the time that Fred barged over in the early part of the second half to provide the fourth try Tigers didn’t look like losing, they knew it, Sale knew it, the crowd knew it, I knew it and even Barnes knew it and he don’t know much!

Tigers in the first half were superb and back to their best but their confidence is still a fragile commodity and the shock of those two quick tries from their opponents shook them in a way that would have been unthinkable a year or so back.

The pack played well, with the front five as secure as the Bank of America, although without Ben Kay the Sale locks were able to retain their own ball until the appearance of Marais. Back had a towering game with Josh relegated to his less favoured blind-side position putting in another gritty and influential performance.

The ever biased Barnes on Sky started screaming that Josh should be cited for catching Redpath with his boot at a ruck. In fact it was a mere touch (try standing on one leg, stretching across a pile of bodies with the other and doing anything meaningful with it - stupid man!) Redpath, disappointingly, decided that he was grievous hurt and went down like a Brazilian centre-forward until he realised that his ploy to get Tigers’ penalised had failed, at which point he sprang to his feet unmarked and Lazarus-like played on. Frankly I expected better of this talented player who gave Tierney a tetchy afternoon although the Irishman acquitted himself well giving Oz good service and producing some good box-kicks.

It was a pretty clean game all round with only Anglesea having to have a compulsory rest in spite of Goodliffe doing his best to get Johnno in lumber for leaning on the tackled man as he got up - really, pass the smelling salts do!!!!

An enjoyable game for all that and in spite of the two worst officials in the land, Lander and Goodliffe, doing their level best to ruin the spectacle with their usual pettifogging, for which they are rightly both infamous. Clearly Lander has spent some time reading the rule book, let’s hope he soon gets beyond ‘A’ for arcane and makes his way to ‘U’ for uncontested scrums.

All in all then a brilliant 38 minutes from Tigers followed by a disastrous 2 and then a workmanlike 45 but most importantly 5 points were secured. They’ll need to maintain the quality they showed in the first 40 minutes for a lot longer if they’re to prevail over Munster next weekend though!

Oh! MOTM? Got to be Geordan on 10/10, he was involved in all the tries and please note Deano - he prefers the wing as much as Stimmo obviously does full-back. Honourable mentions also to Corry and Backy both on 9/10 and who for me at least only missed MOTM by the very slimmest of a Tiger’s whisker.