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Sale v Leeds
By Whaley Shark
February 20 2010
So there we are then, job done. On a cold dry night, running six converted tries past the Premiership’s bottom club has rocketed us up to mid-table and given us a 13 point cushion over the relegation spot. Keeping the ball in hand and playing a simple game based around hard-driving forwards and slick passing along the back line, we have ripped the Leeds defence to pieces. Oh bugger, I’m awake now.

I said a couple of weeks ago “it is largely in our hands to finish respectably” and so it was. Unfortunately, like so much ball last night, we’ve dropped it! To be honest, I am too hacked off to write a blow-by-blow account of the game. We looked OK early on, with Ormsby’s eighth minute try a good response to Leeds’ early drop goal. But scrappy play, followed by a missed tackle, gave Leeds a strong attacking position and they went over for a converted try just after the half hour. We then went back into our shells, reverting to an incomprehensible kicking game and, as time went on and we couldn’t crack a robust Leeds defence, panic sent in, the ball kept going astray and we deservedly lost. After the game, the players looked shell-shocked and, unusually, almost no fans stayed to clap them off the pitch.

We now face a major challenge. Our strategy this season seems very much to have been to target games, and I’ve understood and supported this approach. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Leeds at home was on Kingsley’s “Win” list as, I suspect, Bath at home was too.

The next few weeks will be a real test for the club. From the looks on their faces, the players just didn’t see Leeds coming, and picking them up is going to be tough. Is Deano, off to Toulon in a couple of months, the man to do that captain’s job? I don’t know. How will Kingsley, Director of Rugby and ultimately the man responsible for affairs on the field, respond? Does he have a Plan B because Plan A sure looks broken to me? This may well be the making or breaking of him as a top level coach. Then what about the higher reaches of the club- James Jennings and Brian Kennedy? Kingsley works within the constraints they impose- has Kingsley done the best he can with his resources, or have BK and JJ misjudged the situation and put Kingsley in an impossible position? All big questions to which there are no answers.

I usually see myself as one of the positive voices on the board and my glass is indeed normally half full. But I am worried. The plan has obviously gone wrong, and that’s OK, these things happen, sometimes self-inflicted, sometimes not. It’s the response to misfortune that’s the real test, and that’s what we are about to see. Certainly, everyone else in the Premiership will see us as beatable- "Put them under pressure and they’ll panic, then spend the rest of the game kicking the ball to us". Hold on for a white-knuckle ride to the end of the season.

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