These back-to-back fixtures in the pool stage can make or break a campaign. Saracens duly claimed their second win against Sale, which might not make theirs quite yet, but it moves them top of Pool 1 for now at least, with Clermont and Munster yet to meet in Auvergne.
It would be ridiculous to quibble with that at this stage of a viciously competitive pool, but a bonus point would really have set the angel on the tree for the home side. They had to fight so hard to overcome a feisty team that they were forced to work for an hour just to make the win vaguely safe.
In the end, they ran out of time for the bonus point try, and Sale it was who finished the try-scoring, having started it too.
Once again, the Sharks were refusing to observe the expected script. With nothing really to play for after two pool defeats in October, their competitiveness last week on their own turf was one thing, but here, another defeat later, with several key players stood down, most expected a routine victory for Saracens, tied off with a bonus point, quite possibly by half-time.
Perhaps the problem was that Saracens, too, might have expected such an outcome; perhaps it was simply that Steve Diamond does not breed players who think like that. An 11-8 deficit at the break was about right, no less than the visitors deserved, having scored the game’s first try at the start of the second quarter. If there were key players stood down for this – Danny Cipriani, who had retired with a knock the week before, Chris Cusiter, Magnus Lund, Sam Tuitupou, to name a few – so Sale welcomed the return of Nathan Hines after a couple of months out and Dan Braid, their captain, after a week’s rest. Hines is just the kind of old warhorse to stiffen a team of little motivation or expectation and he duly leapt over a ruck to touch down for that first try after Sale had pummelled the Saracens line for a few phases.
Nick Macleod, in for Cipriani, missed the conversion, so Saracens, who had been 6-0 up at that point through two Owen Farrell penalties, retained the lead. If Sale were proving stiffer than they had any right to be, Saracens were looking dominant but flat. David Strettle, who came off with a knock to the head midway through the first half, dropped the ball in the sixth minute with the line not so much at his mercy as on its way to the scaffold. Their scrum was dominant but their lineout wobbly, and they could not make much impression with a surfeit of possession.
As is so often the way it was off unexpected ball that they prospered. Mako Vunipola was one man enjoying himself in the set piece and over the ball. He snatched his latest turnover, and Richard Wigglesworth was off down the left. A few moments later, Duncan Taylor and Chris Ashton combined down the right and Alex Goode nipped in at the corner, a few minutes before the break.
Macleod landed a penalty just before they headed in, with Sale pressing hard, but after they returned it was all Saracens for 20 minutes. Farrell slotted his third penalty before Saracens finally found a way through, which they did in style on the hour. Again, it was from turnover ball, this time a counterattack from a loose kick, which Ashton ran back. The Vunipola brothers featured in the move that followed, Billy breaking the line after great link work by the excellent George Kruis, and Chris Wyles sent Ben Ransom away. Daylight for Saracens at last on a chilly, misty night.
They had to wait another 15 minutes for try No3, and this really was more like it. Billy Vunipola finished it with a characteristic charge over the line, but the preceding move had been sweeping, with Vunipola making an early dent, followed by James Johnston, then Kruis again, galloping through. After Goode had darted close, Farrell put the big man over and converted from the touchline. Three tries on the board; five minutes to register that fourth.
There was time for one more try, but it was Sale’s Eifion Lewis-Roberts who claimed it – from a lineout and drive, with Brett Sharman, Saracens’ replacement hooker, in the sin-bin. It was an appropriate finish for one of the groups of death in this tournament. Sale will now finish bottom, but their stubbornness may yet prove influential.
