By Whaley Shark
May 19 2013

Well, it doesn’t seem as if a whole season’s gone by since I found my way to an unfamiliar seat in an unfamiliar Salford City Stadium for a warmup game against Leinster, but it is, and the board’s in summer survival mode so I thought I’d start with a look back at what turned out to be a turbulent season.

 

A week after that Leinster game, it was down to proper business, and a portent of things to come, as we travelled down to Sandy Park for a right battering. 14-3 down at half time, the Sharks imploded to give Exeter a very comfortable bonus point win. The following week, in the first serious game at SCS, we picked up our first point, with a losing bonus against an authoritative Saracens side. Next up, away at Quins, we coughed up yet another try bonus. Played three, one point wasn’t a great start to the AP campaign but, given the games we’d played, I felt it was understandable. The next week really started alarm bells ringing for me, though. London Welsh, everyone’s hot tip for more or less instant relegation, turned up in Salford, got stuck into us, and roared into a 13 point lead after only ten minutes. We never recovered, and a disjointed, panicky performance saw us lose 29-19. We finished the first quarter of the AP campaign at the end of September with a 31-10 loss away in Bath to leave us firmly rooted the bottom of the table.

The poor start to the season triggered a prolonged period of off-field change, which I’ll talk about another time, but all that change wasn’t reflected in an abrupt improvement in form. Tigers visited Salford at the start of October and collected four points, without ever needing to get out of second gear, and then we paused the AP for the first rounds of Heineken Cup rugby. Cardiff’s visit gave us our first win of the season, fighting back from a 12 point half time deficit to sneak a 34-33 win, and the following week we lost away at Montpellier.

Then it was back to the AP and our second point, a losing bonus away at Worcester, followed by the visit of a misfiring London Irish and our first AP win. We took a break for the LV= Cup, of which more later, then lost heavily away at Gloucester and, in bitterly cold fog, at Salford to Northampton.  December opened with a Heineken double-header against Toulon, who won quite comfortably in Salford, then turned on to the style back on the Mediterranean coast to inflict Sale’s heaviest defeat of the professional era, 62-0. It was nice to see so many Sale old boys back in the northwest, though, and many congratulations to Toulon for yesterday’s win in the Heineken final. In the AP we lost away to Wasps and, in a much more coherent performance, we brought 2012 to a close with a decent win against Worcester in Salford which took us beyond 10 points in the AP table. Had we started to turn the corner?

2013 opened with two more Heineken Cup losses, at home to Montpellier and away to Cardiff, both really irrelevant since the chances of progression were long gone, and we had more pressing priorities in the AP. After a bit more LV=, we returned to the AP in February, beating Exeter at home and, critically, sneaking a 26-25 win away at London Welsh. Combined with London Welsh’s points deduction, those results took us off the bottom of the table for the first time. Unsurprisingly, though, the teams competing for the top of the table spots were still too much for us, with Quins collecting four points in Salford, then Tigers giving us a real battering in the early spring sunshine at Welford Road. In the second half of March, we pulled off a brave, narrow win against Bath at home in vicious cold and driving snow, followed by a nail-biting 33-all draw away at London Irish, giving s a bit of a cushion over Welsh.

We finished the season quite strongly, with a good win at Salford against a misfiring Gloucester, a battering away at Northampton and, finally, a tight win against Wasps at home, which saw us nip ahead of Worcester and finish tenth in the table, behind Irish on points difference, a finishing position I wouldn’t have believed possible back in November/December.

That was certainly a roller-coaster season- even by Sale’s demanding standards, quite a soap opera. A lot’s gone on, and I imagine lessons have been learned- I’ll reflect on what those might be another time. But looking back, three one point wins have had a huge significance for our season.

Finally, I said I’d come back to the LV= Cup. While I don’t understand it, we were competitive in two rounds in November, losing narrowly to London Irish away, then beating Saracens in Salford.  The pool games in the New Year came at a good time for us, and wins over Scarlets in Salford and away to Wasps helped maintain momentum. We beat Saracens (again, why?) in the semi-final, before going down to a strong Quins side in the final. I was worried by the LV=, as a potential distraction from the serious business of AP survival but, looking back, it was a low pressure diversion and a useful confidence builder. Who knows what next season will bring?