By Chris Chaplin
October 2 2003

Tigers unbeaten in three starts and equal third. Sale without a premiership win for six months and close to the basement. Who’d have thought it? Not me! Sale got turned over by Bath last Friday evening and failed to get a try, which at least Bath did though Brendon Daniel but really it was about Ollie Barkley kicking his points and VanStraaten not kicking his.

Sale have been hit with a spate of injuries at the start of the new season with Anglesea, Dan Harris, Jos Baxendell and Charlie Hodgson all long term injured while stand in centre Rhys Jones is also crocked. In addition to this tale of woe Bryan Redpath and Jason White are now at last Australia bound.

Kevin Yates was also an enforced absentee from the Sale line-up that faced Bath on Friday evening following another suspension, this time for a bit of skulduggery up at Kingston Park where Sale continued to experience the jinx that besets them on Tyneside, regardless of how badly the opposition plays.

If recent history is anything to go by Andrew Sheridan will start on one side of the scrum against Tigers with Titterell taking the centre berth his having replaced Cairns against Bath and Stewart may well be his other front row supporter.

I saw Sheridan a few times when he was at Bristol, where he made 60 first team starts, scoring half a dozen tries in the process, having gravitated there from the old Richmond club. If memory serves me right I seem to remember his having also played at lock with some effect. One of those brought in by coach Mallinder to beef up last season’s somewhat fragile scrum he’s a good prospect. I must confess to rather liking Titterell, he’s one of those very mobile hookers and having been involved in the England set up since he first played for the U16s he’s now knocking on the door of the senior squad. Last in the front row we’ll probably see five times capped Scot Barry Stewart with ex Rotherham player Turner on the bench, his being one of those useful coves able to play anywhere in the front row. Perhaps they’ll risk Yates though. If he can keep himself under control for a while we may see what some folks were raving about a few years back before he was banished down under.

Another fine young prospect appears in the second row, one Chris Jones of our acquaintance and of Oz’s in particular, who I am sure in his rugby nightmares, still sometimes sees Jones plucking his errant kick out of the air and disappearing into the none too bright lights of Heywood Road last season. Giraffe-like as he gambols around the park I thought when I saw Jones last season that he probably needs a bit more upper body strength to be to the real deal but he’s certainly effective in the lineout and in the loose. His partner will probably be another local lad, Dean Schofield, who is seemingly preferred in the starting line up to the more experienced and six times capped Scottish lock Iain Fullarton.

In the enforced absence of Pete Anglesea, Alex Sanderson has assumed the captain’s mantle. Another player who, capped just a few times for England, must count himself unfortunate to have been trying to further his career at international level when the national side has such a rich vein of talent to draw upon in the back-row. Dynamic in the loose it will be interesting to see how he competes on the floor with one Mr Kronfeld.

Australian ex Randwick and Waratahs player Stuart Pinkerton is another mobile and abrasive character who is pretty much a fixture in the Sale back row these days but he, together with yet another local, Phil Davies, hasn’t had too much change out of the other back-rows that they’ve come up against so far this term.

With the superb Bryan Redpath absent on World Cup duty the #9 shirt is now with young England U19s player Richard Wigglesworth. At just 20 it’s a big step up for this talented young player and he will be severely tested over the next few months. The other half back is the now recovered Braam VanStraaten who made his Sale debut against Bath and had an uncharacteristically bad night with the boot, missing no fewer than five penalties which would have seen his side home, however he was devilishly effective in that department whilst at Leeds so don’t count on a repeat non-performance next weekend. Now good as VanStraaten is with the boot I do wonder whether he’s creative enough at fly-half to get the exceptionally talented Sale back division away as does Hodgson, or indeed Baxendell for that matter.

In the centre another of my personal favourites Graeme Bond. This talented, superstitious, centre also has Waratahs experience in his cv together with a spell at ACT Brumbies, capped just five times for Australia (although he was born in Papua New Guinea), He is a real breaker of the gain line par excellence but he will need some decent ball to work with, if he does get the service or the ball gets loose watch out. Usually Bond would be partnered in the centre by Dan Harris however he too is injured having been crocked in the opening game of the season against Saints and so new boy, winger James Hoyle, has been standing in of late and shared the burden against Bath with Chris Mayor, yet another debutante this season, these two youngsters are also having to learn fast.

On the wings though there’s experience aplenty with Steve Hanley and Mark Cueto both appearing in the first three matches of this season. Hanley is no stranger to us and is a superb finisher from anywhere on the park, discarded by England after being hailed as the next big thing by Woodward and in spite of scoring a try against Wales on his debut, he was culled following the loss at Wembley when another Grand Slam went begging. I guess his loss was Ben Cohen’s gain, their being of similar ilk. Since then he’s buckled down to the task at Sale with great effect, having scored more than fifty tries from his 80 plus appearances.

Mark Cueto has also spent his playing career with Sale and has been a fixture in the side for some time having himself scored 25 tries from 46 appearances. Often tipped as an England prospect he’s never quite broken into the big time, rather more subtle in his approach than the bruising Hanley, these two compliment each other well.

Last line of defence? Well apparently some chap called Robinson is usually in charge of this department but he’s off somewhere or other so Vaughan Going returns, he moved up to Heywood Road from London in 2000 and he has played almost fifty times for the north west club, getting ten tries for them, added to this he has been capped 17 times, for Hong Kong strangely enough, scoring 8 tries in the process. The point of this examination of the Whangarei mans’ career is to show that just because Billy The Whizz is missing it doesn’t mean that the incumbent at 15 cannot do some damage.

Sale have without any doubt had a poor start to the season in spite of initially having the services of Jason White and Redpath. They haven’t won in the premiership since last March. Will next Saturday be the day when it all changes?

Well I’ve seen all three of the Tigers matches in the premiership this season and my misgivings over the ability of the pack are subsiding slightly. There was no Rowntree against Falcons and if fit I’d like to see both him and Darren Morris feature against Sale as they are both strong mobile props with Morris, even in his new lite format, providing much needed grunt in the front row. Choo-Choo Chuter looks to be thoroughly enjoying his new position as first choice hooker and is growing in confidence all the time with his open field running a very eye-catching feature of his play and his throwing in is also becoming more reliable.

After last Friday’s display I reckon that in Deacon and Hamilton we’ve found our new second row pairing. Deacon we’ve seen plenty of and know that his first team experience last term has paid off handsomely this but James Hamilton also looks very useful indeed. This enormous youngster had a fine try scoring debut and his bulk together with that of Morris helped steady the previously wobbly scrum which acquitted itself well against the Falcons. With their combination of height and agility Hamilton and Deacon did well against the two vastly experienced Falcons’ locks, so much so that both Andrews and Archer had to repeatedly resort to pulling the youngsters down and even the ever inept and weak Ashley Rowden eventually felt obliged to intervene and bin Andrews. I am not saying that the Falcon’s ball was under threat at the line-out but on the other hand I was not overly concerned that Tigers’ was under great pressure either in spite of some dubious tactics from the Tynesiders.

I see no reason whatever to suppose that a front five of Rowntree Nebbett/Morris and Chuter with the same two young locks should not have the beating of the Sale five.

The back-row of Josh/Balding and Johnson W looked similarly secure in their work with the skipper having another fine match and here again I don’t see the Sale trio besting them. Doubtless new crowd favourite Henry T will make another fleeting appearance!

We now come to a conundrum - what is happening with Oz? Now unless I’m very much mistaken this is the fourth best English scrum-half. He’s fit, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the bench, so why isn’t he starting and instead being reduced to odd demeaning cameo appearances? Ellis is still developing but is no Oz. So I hope Oz gets to start, for if he did then he’d dominate the Sale youngster and give Pez a chance to shine with the benefit of quicker ball than he had from Harry on his debut. I thought the young Argentinian did pretty well scoring a great opportunist’s try and do not blame him for not finishing Gibson’s break. I do question where the close support for these two newcomers was though. A combination of Healey and Pez would certainly generate some earlier ball for the very impressive Daryl Gibson, which is what he’s crying out for if he’s to make more breaks the like of which we saw on Friday.

On the subject of conundrums why is Dean Richards persisting with playing Ollie Smith on the wing? I have been labouring under the impression that Smith is seen by the England management as one of the top four English centres, so what’s he doing on the wing? He looks bored and fed up having become used to the more cerebral outside centre position and must be longing to get into harness with Gibson. We are also seeing some strange defensive alignment on the right hand side of the pitch as a consequence of this wanton double misplacement.

Leon Lloyd is back to doing what he does best, taking the ball and running like the devil with it, the only trouble he’s doing it from the wrong place, at 13. On several occasions against Falcons he ran into contact and although he had ample time to release did not do so and Ollie ran on past, once again frustrated, while the move died. With Leon showing his old enthusiasm I’d love to see him taking quality ball from Gibson and Smith and having the chance to run down the wing at a stretched opposition defence rather than endlessly heading into heavy traffic, the negotiation of which is not and never has been his strong suit.

Young Holtby is growing in confidence with every appearance let’s hope then that he’s left alone on the left wing to develop, although it’d be nice to see Booth on later for impact when things loosen up.

Well we now know for sure that which many have felt to have effectively been a done deal for many months. Stimmo is off to USAP. He’s certainly looked his old self so far this season, kicking, running and tackling with the verve that seemed to desert him along with his cheerful demeanour in the second half of last season. Perhaps it’s just the prospect of at last being free of whatever or whoever got him so down last year that has set his game free as well. Until he departs in a couple of months time I hope we’ll see plenty of him

So will the unbeaten run continue? Well I think the pack will secure enough ball and our half backs should have enough about them (particularly if Oz starts with Pez) to boss that area of the field, in which case Gibson, and hopefully Smith, against Bond and Hoyle could be good contest and one which again I think the Tigers will win. Sale probably have the more dangerous and better balanced back three but whether they’ll get the ball is another question - but if they do it could be all hands to the pumps to keep them out. All in all though I see another win to set up Tigers for their trip down to Kingsholm the following week while the good ship Sale Sharks continues to ship water.