Thursday may be the new Friday in some walks of life but when it comes to Prem rugby, the jury is still out. Sale’s victory over Gloucester to kick off the new season was workmanlike, enough to earn a bonus point but left you suspecting that our parents might have been right all along: do not play out on a school night.
Tries from Tom Roebuck, Nathan Jibulu, Joe Carpenter and Hyron Andrews gave the Sharks a winning start to the campaign, founded on set-piece power, a route one approach and George Ford’s supreme game management. Not all Prem matches have to be try-fests – we may come to yearn for agricultural contests such as these later in the season – but this season opener will not win many beauty points. It was not the spectacle with which to launch a rebranded competition considering how willing both sides were to put boot to ball.
Perhaps the organisers might have picked a more stylish fixture to kick things off in midweek. Thursday nights work in France, it ought to work for broadcasters – though TNT Sports is not minded to make it permanent – and it has been introduced as a necessary evil, a means to avoid a scheduling clash with Saturday’s women’s World Cup final.
But a crowd of more than 6,000 did not represent too much of a drop-off for the Sharks and there is a willingness among clubs to try new things these days. “I love it, what’s not to love, we’ve got the whole weekend to drink Malbec!” Sale’s director of rugby, Alex Sanderson, said. “If you lose, it’s a long weekend. We’re going into town tomorrow to a sauna, we’ll go in there to get the review done. Then they’ve got the weekend to relax.
Commercially, is it feasible, can we get enough people through the gates? It looked pretty busy tonight. The only issue is the turnaround time but whatever brings people through the gates to watch some decent rugby.”
Casting your eye over the teamsheets, there was much to like about two sides with contrasting styles locking horns to open a new campaign. Gloucester looked a little light in the front five at first glance but did include Afo Fasogbon, going up against a fellow 21-year-old tighthead prop in Asher Opoku-Fordjour – a tussle no doubt keenly enjoyed by England head coach, Steve Borthwick.
Sale enjoyed the better of the scrum contest, but Fasogbon was making himself a nuisance at the breakdown, winning his side two penalties. The trouble was that Gloucester, with a desperately inaccurate lineout, could do little with the ball whenever he had won it back – and it was no surprise that Sale opened the scoring, Tom Roebuck pouncing on a loose ball in the righthand corner. Gloucester for their part felt aggrieved that Ben Curry’s potential knock-on in the buildup was ignored.
A Ross Byrne penalty on debut put Gloucester on the board, however, before Jack Clement splashed over to pinch a half-time lead for the visitors. It all came from a scrum penalty, wildly celebrated by Fasogbon, who was replaced at half-time, paying the price for Sale’s set-piece superiority.
More scrum dominance for the hosts yielded further promising territory after the break as well as a numerical advantage when Clement was sent to the sin-bin for collapsing a maul and Jibulu was eventually rewarded with a pushover try before Ford nudged the Sharks back ahead with the conversion.
Sale Carpenter; Roebuck, R Du Preez, Ma’asi‑White (Reed 63), O’Flaherty; Ford, Warr; Rodd (McIntyre 60), Jibulu (Caine 60), Opoku-Fordjour (John 60), Van Rhyn (capt), Bamber, Vermeulen (Woodman 68), B Curry (Andrews 60), Dugdale.
Tries Roebuck, Jibulu, Carpenter, Andrews. Cons Ford 2 Pen Ford.
Gloucester C Atkinson; Loader (Joseph 55), Llewellyn, S Atkinson, Thorley; Byrne, Williams (capt) (Englefield, 63); Bellamy (McArthur ht), Innard, Fasogbon (Gotovtsev ht); Clark (Jordan 55), Alemanno (Ludlow 61), Thomas, Venter, Clement. Sin‑bin Clement (50). Try Clement. Con Byrne. Pen Byrne.
Referee Christophe Ridley. Attendance 6,256.
A Ford penalty ensured Gloucester were five points adrift, which felt like too big a margin given their obvious deficiencies in the second half and Carpenter’s late dash to the corner, after a long floated pass from Ford, made sure of Sale’s victory before Andrews clinched the bonus point.
“I thought [George] was outstanding,” Gloucester’s director of rugby, George Skivington, said. “When George smells blood and they got that lead then every ball was getting pinned behind you and he’s pinpoint at that. He managed that last 20 minutes extremely well. We did what he wanted us to do and he capitalised.”
