Sale Game Thread

[Westy68]

I would look at jack for captain as well, you look at his commitment and it isn’t matched by many players, also or Friday I saw him challenging the ref on a couple of occasions.

[BG]

I'd be very happy with Jack as Captain.

He would get my vote (not that I have a vote) but the perennial problem is that one player isn't going to be available all the time.

By his actions alone though, he does seem to have a rallying effect on the rest of the players. If the 9 and 10 aren't captains they should be offering tactical advice to the captain to allow him to make a decision. As talented as Dobby and Sopps are, I don't think they are doing this.

It may be as a result of who both played with previously (Cips and did Sopps play with Smith?) meant that they could leave the game managment element to someone else.

[Westy68]

Also Gaskell was Sales captain at the age of only 20, making him the youngest captain, so I read

[Brandnewtorugby]

JB, the Sale supporter on Eggchaser's, has never sounded like a big fan of Wasps and has been saying for a while that we are in trouble and not coached well. This week, after watching the game, he has changed his tune a little and doesn't seem to think we are in as much trouble as he thought. Thought it interesting how different the view was to the prevailing view of supporters. After seeing the stats, perhaps we have all been a little glass half empty, or have unrealistic expectations. I am sure there will be lots of analysis of the penalties, I am going to cling onto the hope that some quick fixes will be possible.

[Tervueren]

Watching it afterwards without any expectation and knowing the result was a lot less painful than listening to it live on the radio, it was no-where near as bad a performance as it felt at the time. That is also true of the LI match and parts of the Bath game that seemed terrible when watching live.

Not to be complacent, if we give away points like that all season then we could be in big trouble, but whilst not really expecting top 4 (though have the final ticket ready just in case) I don't think it will take a lot to iron out the problems.

It could be a case of not having to outrun the bear, just the person next to you, we need to improve more than Leicester and a few others. (Don't fancy every year feeling like this though)

Glass is half-full until the next match? (this is the "Glee Club" after all)

[Rifleman Harris]

If I recall, Ben Kay was saying after the game that there was one problem that would have massively reduced the penalty count and that was simply the ball acrriers getting over the gain line.  He highlighted that not getting go forward resulted in getting 'go sideways' which meant that supporting players couldn't support the ball carrier as well or clear out as they were approaching at totally the wrong angle.  This led to turnovers, penalties and slow ball.

Now I was just a full back in my day, and an incredibly poor one at that, so I have no idea if he is right, but the engineer in me can see the logic of his argument.  How you would go about addressing that, I have no idea but hopefully the coaching set up noticed the same (or were listening) and have some plans.

[Hymenoptera]

JB, the Sale supporter on Eggchaser's, has never sounded like a big fan of Wasps and has been saying for a while that we are in trouble and not coached well. This week, after watching the game, he has changed his tune a little and doesn't seem to think we are in as much trouble as he thought. Thought it interesting how different the view was to the prevailing view of supporters. After seeing the stats, perhaps we have all been a little glass half empty, or have unrealistic expectations. I am sure there will be lots of analysis of the penalties, I am going to cling onto the hope that some quick fixes will be possible.

But his opinion on Wasps, or anything really, can't be taken seriously as he has been saying we are in trouble for about 5 seasons, tainted that Wasps took a few Sale players. His change of opinion seems to be less about Wasps standing and more about moving his disdain towards Tigers. Anything this man utters should be ignored.

Back to the captain debate, Willis too early for me. He is still developing and needs a full season under his belt with no distraction. Its too big a jump IMO. I'd be happy for him to remain a pitch leader for now...
Which in no way helps with our situation

[BG]

Running at a slight angle away from the scrum or ruck or maul allows the defence to drift and use the 16th defender...

Ideally you need someone running a straight or cut back line to stop the defenders drift.. whether that person gets the ball or not doesn't matter.. but it holds the defence up for a split second... it places a seed of doubt .. is this person cutting back getting the ball or not

I'm really surprised that Gleeson hasn't brought this in being from RL... but RL doesn't have to worry about ball retention if a player becomes isolated

[Rifleman Harris]

If I understood Kay correctly, he was saying that by being pushed sideways / backwards 2m in every collision instead of making 2m over the gainline meant that players supporting had to continually change their lines, risking coming in at the side or delaying their engagement with the ruck allowing Sale to get a turnover.
I guess it probably also meant players were also more likely to drift as they tried to get as much of an advantage in the collision as they could(?). 

Either way, I think there is something in this being one of the routes of our problems. It would be interesting how many of the penalties were when we had the ball, and how many turnovers were affected at the ruck.

[mike909]

re the penalities - many were for basic offside. I don't think we were worse than Sale, but my personal, tinfoil hat, position is that dressed in bright orange makes it easier to give.....But still you need to adapt

At the breakdown, the ref had a poor game. Seemingly not recently familiar with Laws 14 and 15. That said, you still need to adapt to the ref. We didn't do that very well

If reffed to the Law, it would make for a better game - but that's for another day.

[welsh wasp]

Only seen games on TV this season, but our new No.8 seems to generally move in a forward direction.

[Rossm]

re the penalities - many were for basic offside. I don't think we were worse than Sale, but my personal, tinfoil hat, position is that dressed in bright orange makes it easier to give.....But still you need to adapt

At the breakdown, the ref had a poor game. Seemingly not recently familiar with Laws 14 and 15. That said, you still need to adapt to the ref. We didn't do that very well

If reffed to the Law, it would make for a better game - but that's for another day.

Indeed. Our defensive line was falling foul of the ref by (allegedly) being off side a lot. My impression was that Foley was being particularly pernickety or his assistants were. However I was watching on screen and often can only see the detail.

[Rifleman Harris]

re the penalities - many were for basic offside. I don't think we were worse than Sale, but my personal, tinfoil hat, position is that dressed in bright orange makes it easier to give.....But still you need to adapt

At the breakdown, the ref had a poor game. Seemingly not recently familiar with Laws 14 and 15. That said, you still need to adapt to the ref. We didn't do that very well

If reffed to the Law, it would make for a better game - but that's for another day.

Good point, I recall a couple of penalties when Healy was convinced they should have gone or way for the Sale player not supporting his own weight.

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[mike909]

Its been a bugbear for me (Laws 14 and 15) as when reffed well (NZ Provincial games an excellent example) once ruck is called, you cannot use your hands, supporting your weight or not - unless you were a) first to the tackled player and b) on your feet and c) clearly on the ball. Its education - well it was for me - to read the Laws and the explanations

But our ref allowed hands in the ruck, off feet players allowed to compete for the ball and hands in the ruck. It was a mess and hard to adapt to.

As for offside, there was (from the TV shots) no obvious issue but we kept on being called - hence my "tinfoil" comment!

[AndyL]

Along side those the real one for me is players going off their feet. Not just not supporting their body weight but when cleaning out totally flying in or even worse the judo roll. It's a touchy subject for me as I got my back injured playing full back when a forward flew in off his feet as I was jackaling for the ball. We saw an example of that on Fri and I'm amazed more players aren't hurt in the rucks because of it.

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