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View from the south stand: Sale 23 Exeter 17


By Cap'n Major Bloodnok
February 16 2016

Unbeaten in 2016. Challenge Cup quarter finalists. A win against 3rd placed Leicester on their own patch. Looking good. Next up: 2nd in the table Exeter...

This was a game of two halves.

Well, duh! Obviously: that’s how the game’s organised.

OK, then – this was a game of two contrasting halves, pedant. In the first half, Sale had much of the ball and made the most of their possession to dominate the score line, if not the actual play. The second half saw Exeter start to play as if they believed that they were worth second place in the table. It was only masterful, dogged defence that prevented them from turning the tables and taking the spoils.

Right, that’s the clichés out of the way: so what happened?


 

It’s an intriguing observation that the number of people getting the coach from The Brook is a good indicator of what the size of the crowd is likely to be. At first I thought that this correlation was going to be broken on Saturday because, looking at the number of empty seats on the coach, it indicated that a pretty small turnout was in the offing. But this was a game against second in the table and followed on from a run of good results including a win over Leicester the week before: away! People ought to be flocking in.

We arrived at the ground and went into a Shark Tank that was so empty that they hadn’t even run out of beer yet. Things hadn’t improved much by the time the entertainment came on. I say ‘entertainment’; shall we just say that a black suit and tie, trilby and sunglasses do not a Blues Brother make and leave it at that?

Into the South Stand, and it was pretty obvious that The Coach Does Not Lie. A very disappointing turnout for what ought to be a cracker.

The game, as I said, divided neatly into two halves; to the extent that there was even a fifteen-minute gap between them. Spooky, or what?


 

Sale kicked off (unusually) toward the South Stand, and play went back and forth for the first few minutes, during which Exeter were awarded the first penalty. That Steenson chose to kick for the corner, rather than take a fairly simple three points indicated either great confidence or a bit of arrogance. Nothing came of it, though, because of Bryn’s beard and its ability to disrupt lineouts. Seriously, signing that beard is one of the best, if somewhat unsung, things that Dimes did last summer.

About 7 minutes in and Ross Harrison appeared to forget which direction Sale were playing, standing the wrong side of a ruck and facing the wrong way, despite ref Small telling him repeatedly to move. Unsurprisingly, Small awarded Exeter the penalty, which they took quickly. Ross then compounded things by completely forgetting the laws of the game as they relate to the penalty and making a tackle about a metre from the kick. Maybe he just fancied the 10-minute rest…

They say a binning is worth seven points but, with half of Ross’s gone, Exeter still hadn’t made it count when their own resident beard-with-attached-player, James Short, decided to even the game up by getting himself sent to the naughty step after taking Addison out in the air from a Stringer (he may be a gobby little git, but he’s our gobby little git) box kick.

Cipriani continued his kicking form from the previous week by sending the penalty wide left of the posts.

From the restart, the teams played a bit of football before Easter picked the ball up and made a break. He fed it to Boris, who was brought down inches from the line. From the ruck, Stringer gave it to Cips, who flung out a long miss pass that sailed past Johnny Leota’s head, but bounced and sat up for him to run on to it, gather and bundle over the line for the opening score.

Cips missed the conversion, to bring up an even 60% strike rate (30 out of 50) for the season.

5-0 to Sale, and time for Ross to return to the field.

We then had about five minutes of back-and-forth, which included Steenson missing a penalty (maybe that’s why he mostly went to the corner) and Small adopting the ‘magic 8-ball’ system of scrum refereeing that's so popular with refs these days.

Then, just before Short was due to return, Stringer delivered the ball from a ruck to Neild, who passed it to James, who suddenly found himself behind the Exeter defence some forty metres out. The ball went to Edwards via Haley, and Li’l Nev did what he’s proving that he does best by dashing down the line from 30 metres out to score in the left-hand corner.

Cips missed the conversion. 10-0.

The Chiefs’ forwards started to pile on some pressure and, for the next ten minutes or so, Sale’s defence was tested sorely. That they held firm and eventually got the turnover is actually not that surprising, such is the improvement we’ve been seeing over the last year or so.

Then with just a few minutes of the first half to go, Mr. T and Li’l Nev were doing creditable impressions of a pinball bouncing off the bumpers trying to find a way through the Chiefs’ defence. The ball made its way to Cipriani, who, in what was obviously a carefully worked-out training ground manoeuvre, pretended to kick for the drop goal, but bounced the ball back infield off the left-hand post. It fell to the feet of Haley, who was totally not in an offside position in any way, shape or form; *cough*. A bit of deft footwork put the ball into his hands for a simple run in from five metres out.

Even Cips couldn’t put the conversion anywhere but between the posts.

Half-time, 17-0 to Sale and the fans were happy, but privately convinced that Sale were perfectly capable of making a bog of it in the second half. Oh, it’ll take more than a run of six or seven games without defeat to disabuse the average Sale supporter of the conviction that the team can prise defeat from the most firmly closed of victory jaws.


 

The second half, I have to admit, was almost entirely Exeter battering at the Sale try line. That they didn’t score a pile of tries was down to the aforementioned sterling defensive work. I noted in the last report that Sale weren’t finishing so many promising attacking moves with a knock-on as before. It’s similarly notable how few defence-in-extremis periods are not ending in a penalty against Sale these days.

And it’s that, I believe, that allowed the 17-0 score at the half to be enough against the onslaught of the second half. Sale’s defence essentially forced Exeter’s attack to go laterally for little forward gain. This used up time and energy.

Yeardle scored for the Chiefs five minutes into the second half and Lewis twenty minutes later. With two penalties from Cipriani in there as well, the score was a healthy 23-14 with a couple of minutes to go, and we were all tentatively allowing that we might actually win this one.

Even when Steenson kicked the penalty to make it 23-17 with just a few seconds left, we felt that that was it. Job done, four points in the bag, allow Exeter their losing bonus. Time for another beer, home and look forward to next week’s game.

There's always a ‘but’...

We have time for the restart, so Danny kicks up field where Chiefs collect it, and they’re thinking, “we could do this…”. As play continues, there are a few squeaks being heard from bums around the ground as the old Sale supporter pessimism starts to crank up the engine. But then, Oh Joy!, referee Small signals a Sale penalty. Yes! Bang it into row Z, job done, etc. etc.

There's always a ‘but’...

Danny signals that he’s going for the three points.

What the —? Seriously, guys. Denying them the losing bonus point is not going to have any material effect on our season, but missing the kick and giving them another opportunity to march upfield really could. At least kick the flippin’ leather off it so that, if it does miss, it goes dead.

Oh, sweet misplaced optimism. Danny proceeded to kick—and I use that word incorrectly—the most pathetic flubber, that barely even reached the posts. It was more worthy of the half-time kicking competition than a fly-half with international aspirations.

We then had another few minutes of genuine squeaky bum time until the ball came loose from a ruck and we kicked it into touch, Small waved the players to the tunnel and we all started breathing again. Job done...


 

That was a vitally important game to win. It showed that the winning habit is starting to take hold, and that we can say that we have a good chance against anyone. I’m starting to believe that this team can kick on and really go places as long as we can retain our key playmakers like James, Haley, Cipriani—

 

 

Oh, bugger.

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