Sale (sail away, sail away etcetc)

[Raggs]

Always hate this game.  Sale do special training just for this game, just to target us, and the fans absolutely adore it when they beat us (which they have done so with annoying regularity).

Hopefully we won't lose any more players to injury! And a return for Taylor would be welcome.

Dai may know, but if Marty Moore was just bad, rather than Cruse being shattered and therefore reducing the strength of our scrum, I'd be tempted to bring Stuart back onto the bench.

Our attack still looked good against tigers, and I like the fact we tried to hold onto the ball, even if we need to pay attention when it's in our half.  We do need to obviously finish chances a bit better, but I don't think we'll manage to be so poor again.

[Rossm]

Perhaps Marty has just lost a bit of interest as he's leaving this season. However facing Genge force 12 can't be anyone's idea of how to spend a Sunday afternoon.

[Raggs]

Genge is a beast, no arguments there, but we were getting shoved off our own ball, which really takes a very large mismatch.  As I said, maybe it was Cruse losing power in his legs, due to playing so long.

[Rossm]

It may be the case that Tom Cruse was simply out muscled. Tatafu Polota-Nau is just an inch taller but weighs 2 stone more. And of course he had to play the full 80. In the circumstances would bringing on TJ Harris, both shorter and lighter, been such a bad move?

[Raggs]

We'll not know.  Have to assume that Dai felt a tired Cruse was more effective than a fresh TJ.

[Rossm]

There seems to be a very good chance that TT will be back for the Sale game. He completed two training sessions ahead of the Leicester game, however, the decision was made to give him extra time to recover ahead of the trip to the AJ Bell Stadium on Friday, April 6.
Of course all the boys have an extra week off before the Sale game.

[mike909]

Always hate this game.  Sale do special training just for this game, just to target us, and the fans absolutely adore it when they beat us (which they have done so with annoying regularity).

Raggs, what special training? I'd certainly have a particular tactic for Wasps, I.e. not losing shape, making sure you find touch and the like, but special training?

[Raggs]

Last season they apparently changed everything from their normal routine, they had their 2nd XV emulating Wasps as much as possible etc.  Remember hearing about it on the eggchasers podcast, JB has a lot of connections with Sale, I may be right in remembering there was a player talking about it too.

[andermt]

Nervous of this one, have decided, last minute to head up for the match (not looking forward to fighting my way through the Friday evening M6 traffic).

This and the Falcons game were the 2 I was most worried about in the run-in, I actually thought we would turn Tigers over, just didn't quite happen.

[Raggs]

If we have Taylor back, that'll help a lot.  After Sale we get one of our centres back as well.

[mike909]

Last season they apparently changed everything from their normal routine, they had their 2nd XV emulating Wasps as much as possible etc.  Remember hearing about it on the eggchasers podcast, JB has a lot of connections with Sale, I may be right in remembering there was a player talking about it too.

Merci, but why just for us? You'd kinda expect most teams to use their subs that way in practice?

[Raggs]

When it was reported last year it was very much made out to be special attention. We've signed a lot of players from them over the seasons.