By Sarah Braide
December 1 2002

Ever since he took up Union, there has been discussion about what position Jason Robinson would be most useful in. Sale started him off at wing and then moved him to full-back. The Lions played him on the wing, whilst England have gone for number 15. Recently Sale have played him at number 12 outside Graeme Bond. This seems to be because Vaughan Going has got so much better this season that he deserves his place at full back. Ironically, it appears that Vaughan's style of play owes more than a little to the influence of Jason Robinson.

But the question is, are we wasting Jason at centre? After all, he makes a lot of chances with his runs from deep in opposition territory and those are not going to arise with him at centre. However a reassuringly large 85% of voters in the poll this week said no, we are not wasting his talents at centre. Vaughan Going is playing so well that it makes sense to have him and Jason both on the field.

HD summed it up really nicely on the messageboard:

"I don't think there is any doubt that his best position for Sale is FB, but also feel we have to play Going at the moment as he has possibly been our most consistent performer over last half dozen games. Therefore, in the short term he has to play outside Bondi at 13. I think we have to accommodate our best performers at all times and this will undoubtedly put some pressure on the likes of Jos, Deano and Dan for the centre positions. Nice problem to have though, don't you think?"

Sale now have some difficult Heineken Cup fixtures to play. We are at the bottom of our group after two games and we really need results against Llanelli next weekend and the weekend after if we are going to qualify for the quaretr finals. So my question this week is can we do the business against Llanelli?

Results: Are Sale wasting Jason by playing him at centre?
Yes 15%
No 85%