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Kings of the North: Sale Sharks 27 Newcastle Falcons 18


By Cap'n Major Bloodnok
October 3 2015

Back to the pre-season warm competition after a couple of weeks off, could Sale maintain the perfect record of their previous two games?

Compared to the previous game—the 38-5 win against Leicester—this was a pretty turgid affair. Lots of thud and blunder (more blunder than thud, it must be said), but not much to inspire the 3,000 spectators to any heroic feats of supporterdom. Apart from the school groups in the East Stand, that is, who seemed determined to make enjoy themselves come what may.

A couple of dodgy kick-offs from Cips and three butchered chances by Nev Edwards set the tone of few real chances fizzling out with a mistake of one form or another.

Much huffing and puffing from both sides, but little fluent or coherent play, finally resulted in a try for Newcastle when Will Welch drove over from short range. Delany missed the conversion.

One thing that has been consistently successful for Sale over the last year or so is the maul, and a good Sale maul levelled the scores a few minutes later. Villiamy Fihaki was eventually identified as the scorer. Tom Arscott, looking as if he'd taken a walk through a pool of pink fluorescent marker ink, put in a good conversion from wide on the right.

Newcastle regained the lead through a Delaney penalty but this was, again, short-lived.

Referee Wigglesworth invited Falcons winger Tom Penney to spend 10 minutes reflecting on the nature of ‘contact’, especially as related to Mike Haley's feet and the ground. A sin-binning should be worth 7 points and it looked as if Sale were about to get them almost immediately, but an Arscott pass to Edwards fizzed into touch.

The line out gave no respite to Newcastle, since Sale soon had the ball back near the line. Stringer popped up from a mess of players and sent a looped shovel pass out left where Edwards (finally) caught it and ran in the try. Arscott missed the conversion, even though it was nominally easier than the previous one. Perhaps he accidentally caught sight of his boots at the crucial time and the glare put him off.

Delaney scored a 55-metre penalty to bring the score to 12-11, but Arscott's pink boots failed to replicate the feat to close out the half.

Amazingly for games like these, the second half started with pretty much the same set of players as the first half ended. It also started much the same way the first half started, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We did get the sight of a mazy run from Mike Haley, but—almost inevitably—the move ended with a knock-on.

Cips looked to have strained something in a tackle and was walking a bit gingerly when Dimes took him off and brought Macleod on. It was Macleod's cross-kick to Edwards that produced another bit of excitement as it looked as if Nev was in for number two, but he was tackled into touch and nothing came of it.

It wasn't long, though, before some more Sale pressure led to a try for big Josh, which Macleod converted.

Macleod, flushed with the near-success of his earlier cros-fielder, tried again and this time it worked. Nev ran in try number four for the bonus point. The conversion clattered the right upright, though, leaving the score at 24-11.

That should have been it, really, but some skullduggery in the rolling maul gave Newcastle a penalty try to leave them clutching on to a losing bonus. That was taken away late on as Nick scored the last points of the game with a routine penalty.

And so a moderately forgettable match faded away with Sale maintaining as perfect record in this series: played 3, won 3 with 3 bonus points. Sale now have to go down to Leicester next week, knowing that they will be crowned Kings of the North unless something utterly ridiculous happens. (For the record, Tigers need a 5 point win to get to the same league points as Sale, but they are also facing a try-difference deficit of -13 and a points-difference deficit of -70. Meanwhile, Sale just need a losing bonus point.)

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