By Whaley Shark
March 2 2013

 A slightly bastardised version of Browning’s poem goes “Oh to be in England now that Spring is here” and it was indeed a brilliantly sunny, spring-like day down in the East Midlands.

However, being from the grim North, we were so overcome by the sunshine that we gave Tigers a soft penalty within the first minute, and then had to withstand a massive battering for the next 25 minutes, during which we barely got out of our half. Something had to give and, although we dealt with a Tigers 5 metre scrum, forcing the ball loose and pushing Tigers back to our 22, they came back again- ten metres out, five metres out, one metre out, then Ed Slater forced his way over for the first Leicester try. Nick Macleod slotted a penalty from half way, matched almost straight away by an easy shot from within the Sale 22. As I began to think we might make it to half time without catastrophe, two tries in three minutes right at the end of the half put paid to that idea. The first was a penalty try, awarded as Tom Brady impeded a Tigers player put through with a neat grubber kick, and the second was a rather stylish run-in down the right from nearly half way by Ed Slater, showing that he can score tries from open play as well as do the down-and-dirty stuff.  At half time, and 27-3 down, the game looked well beyond us.

And so it carried on in the second half. Tigers chipped to touch in our 22. We made a complete dog’s breakfast of a short lineout, Tigers spun the loose ball right and Matt Smith crossed for the bonus point try on 50 minutes. Their fifth try, five minutes later, was pretty similar. They pinched another lineout, kicked a penalty to the corner, sucked in the defence with a rolling maul, and sent Matt Smith over on the right again.

41-3 down, with less than an hour played, we clearly had nothing to lose, and were chucking the ball around a bit. Although we did spend significant time in Tigers’ half of the field, we couldn’t build sustained pressure- at one point we strung together eight or nine phases, and went backwards from Tigers’ 22 into our half. Tigers’ sixth try was a bit unfortunate though- we got over-excited at an attacking lineout, let the ball go loose, Tigers hacked upfield and, although we stopped them just short, Tigers ran our clearance back at a disorganised defence and put Matt Tait over on the right. We carried on chucking the ball around, which at least had the effect of keeping the ball a long way from our try line, and Andy Powell nicked a try for us at the end, when Tigers were thinking of hot showers and post-match meals.

To try and sum up, we were simply outgunned today- weakened or not, Tigers had far too much for us. They kept us at arm’s length for the first half, forcing us to defend and defend and, as soon as we slipped up, exploiting their opportunities. We lacked the precision and the cutting edge to break their stranglehold, at least until the game had gone away from us. I actually thought we saw a typical Sale performance, vintage 2012-2013, a bit lackadaisical, but today we were up against a side which was well able to take full advantage.  But credit to Tigers, it takes a very good team to make the game look easy, even against some bottom-dwelling Sharks, and they certainly did that today.

I didn’t go expecting a win; I’d have been delighted with a losing BP, and felt a tonking was on the cards. Weakness in any Tigers team is relative, and all we can do is move on from this as quickly as possible. I can’t see this game ever having been marked up on Dimes’ copy of the fixture list as a Sale win…..