Our coach pulled up at Ice Station Zebra about an hour before kick-off, as usual, and we hurried across to the Shark Tank to fill up on anti-freeze (well, ethanol does have a freezing point of -114˚C, so it counts as anti-freeze). We spent the next half an hour being entertained by a Nina and Frederick tribute actandchatting to people that we would continue chatting to for the next three hours, anyway. 

The time came, though, when we had to brave the Arctic outside to get into the ground to ensure that we reserved our usual spots before the heaving crowds got there first.  

Peering through the carbon dioxide fog, we were surprised to see that Sale were wearing theStabilo Boss strip, rather than the blue home kit. Psychological warfare, we assumed, but it turned out that Section Paloise had brought the wrong shirts. That brought back memories of a game at Heywood Road when Saracens (?) either brought the wrong kit or forgot to bring any and had to borrow Sale's away kit. Happy days. 

That wasn't the only cock-up of the day, though. It turns out that there was a problem with the touch-judges' flags, and they ran the lines waving a couple of Sale Sharks flags from the shop. We half expected to see Swanny with the whistle, but felt that that would be a bit of an obvious advantage. 

I debated whether or not to include this picture, but eventually decided that, if I had to suffer the sight, you can too. The memory is seared into my consciousness, and even the brain bleach cannot wholly eradicate it: 

Before kick-off, there was a minute's silence for the French bombing victims and in memory of Jonah Lomu. The assembled masses observed the silence impeccably, accompanied only by some sort of tannoy announcement going on outside the ground, and the gentle drip, drip of the oxygen condensing out of the air. 

On to the game, and there was much cheering from the 4,006 (yeah, right) supporters in attendance as Moooooooj flopped over the line for a try, converted by Ford. 7-0 after 5 minutes, and the cold was temporarily forgotten. 

The teams seemed to want to run the ball at every opportunity (probably because they were afraid of freezing solid if they had to stand around waiting for a kick) and it was back-and-forth for a while with lots of good defence from the Sharks players. Pau did take one penalty kick, though, to make the score 7-3. Play resumed after the teams had cracked the ice off of their frozen limbs and – horrors! – Quentin Lespiaucq scored the try that took it to 7-10 halfway into the first half. 

Sale's line-out was going well but, unusually, the maul kept fizzling out. However, a 5 metre line-out is a 5 metre line-out, and it was from one of these that Mark Jennings scored following some patient build-up work. Ford converted from the touchline (was Danny watching?) to take the score to 14-10. 

We were then treated to the unfortunately-too-common Sale tactic of spending time on a promising move, which ends in a fumble. And so things wound down to half-time, with just a penalty from Pau to leave the score at the break 14-13. 

The second half started with a successful penalty from Joe Ford (3 from 3, woo-hoo!), but was followed almost immediately by that man Lespiaucq scoring from a maul. 17-20 five minutes into the second half. The Sale players seemed to take this personally and put together a series of good plays, which eventually ended with Sam James scoring – again. James is showing good form and looking a possible to do this year what Mike Haley did last year: keep an established player out of the team. 

With the conversion (4 from 4, even better), it was 24-20 with half an hour to go. 

The next twenty minutes was basically a lot of huffing and puffing and backward and forward, enlivened by a nearly second try from James. The ref had spotted a knock-on, though (what? Sale, knock on? Never.), so no luck. 

And so the game started to wind down, as the players struggled with the cold and I attempted to remove the plastic beer pot that had freeze-welded itself to my fingers. But then, BOOM! With time almost up Fihaki picked the ball up from a couple of metres out, and scored the bonus-point try. Ford missed the conversion, but we forgave him. 

That just left a quick trip to the pub to thaw out before getting back on the coach to go home happy.