Having looked at the respective line ups I felt confident heading over to Stockport and thankfully Bath proved their superiority to get the season up and running.
 
The first half an hour was fairly cagey with a lot of aimless kicking, the major highlight being a treat for ladies with Duncan Bell's double shorts change. Sale managed to establish a 9-6 lead, three Thomas penalties to Little's brace.
 
Bath finally managed to string some phases together and immediately looked dangerous. Carraro was worked into a one on one with Ben Cohen and rounded him with a strong fend to register our first try,  Little adding the extras. The teams headed into half time with Bath 13-9 up but I still wanted to see them be more vocal and confident on the pitch, plus hitting breakdowns with more enthusiasm.
 
The start of the second half was a significant improvement as the intensity upped and we actually looked to play the style that was so effective during the early stages of last season, with Claassy being the catalyst for most good things. Bath were sending up wave after wave of carriers, and eventually Little slipped an offload to Banners from 10 yards and he smashed his way to the line with a very competent, powerful finish. Little missed an easy conversion, but his drops outs and general kicking from hand/ floor had otherwise looked assured.
 
Hape was increasingly getting into the game and it was his half break and lovely inside offload to Carraro which led to our third try some five minutes later. The Aussie showed good pace to finish, and Little slotted the conversion from a tough angle to give Bath a 25-9 lead.
 
Lee Thomas added a further penalty to make it 25-12 but shortly afterwards, another break by Hape nearly saw us register a bonus point try: the direct but clever running of the centres was really worrying the Sale defence. Hape can certainly still improve but unless defenders wrap him up in the tackle they have a serious issue as his offloading game is one of the best around.
 
The game was pretty much won from this point and Bath started to make a raft of substitutions including Hooper, Jarvis, Davis and Beattie. Of course it wouldn't be Bath if they didn't give us a scare, and they succeeded by going down to 13 men for the last seven minutes with Banners and Beast sent to the bin. The defence held out and frankly if I was a Sale fan I would be very worried after their performance. They seemed to lack any passion and direction but I was impressed with their England Under 20 second row James Gaskell who stole some line-outs, carried well, and stood up to the physicality of our huge front five.
 
I will give a special mention to Julian Salvi who produced a very effective performance. He was used a lot in the lineout, carried well alongside Skirving and Mears especially, and was never far from the action. The guy plays with the intelligence you would expect of a former Brumbie and I was pleased to see the ref allow him to compete at the breakdown when he was the tackler as the new directives state, unlike at Glawster where the Shed seemed to be giving the refereeing decisions at times.
 
The performance certainly gave me hope for the season and the return of Olly etc in the near future together with the arrival of Luke Watson will certainly strengthen our options. It does really need to be in the context of a poor Sale showing though, but I was impressed as ever by their fans around me who were happy to chat and were very welcoming. They stated their disappointment at Lemi's final whistle gesture last week, and the dread of the facilities at the Rec for the return fixture- our fans, and travelling fans do really deserve better so lets hopes the club and the RFOTR can continue to push things towards a hasty resolution.
 
Another improvement next week and I am sure we can produce a win against the Tigers and suddenly the world (and the league table) looks a bit more rosy!
 

Referee: Dave Pearson

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