Sale Vs Harlequins 
5 April, 2019
by Bedfordshire Boy

Pretty much a very last minute decision to head north for the Friday night game away at The A J Bell Stadium against Sale Sharks. Never the easiest journey but certainly better than making the journey in December or January. Good looking Quins side with the return of Earle, Symonds, Dombrandt and Sinckler and also interesting to see Catrakilis in the starting line up. Not a bad looking Sale team so Quins need to be at their best to come away with a win especially when you consider what is pretty lousy record at this venue. Nonetheless I am full of hope, not necessarily a view held by all of the 50 ish travelling Quins supporters.

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A Sight For Sore Eyes

With the weather dry and overcast Demetri Catrakilis gets the game underway and during the first minutes each side just keeps kicking the ball away. Following a Sale line out just inside the Quins half, a brilliant Chris Robshaw turnover leads to the first try of the game as Alex Dombrandt makes ground before Mike Brown gets the ball away to Catrakilis. His pass to Danny Care sees Care break deep into the Sale half, he passes to Mike Brown who in turn gets the ball to Ben Taupai and then to Nathan Earle who is brought down just short of the Sale try line. The ball is recycled a couple of times before Mike Brown crashes over the line to become Quins top try scorer with ninety trys for the club. Catrakilis adds the two extra points to put Quins seven points ahead with less than five minutes on the clock.

Quins are back on the attack from the restart and a break by Alex Dombrandt sets the very lively Danny Care free to run in from twenty metres out to cross the Sale try line as he is tackled by his opposite number Faf De Klerk. Sadly the replay showed that Care had been held up over the line but you have to applaud the De Klerk tackle. Quins are penalised in the resulting five metre scrum and Sale clear their line. The first points for Sale come after fourteen minutes of play when Robshaw is penalised for holding on as A J MacGinty records his first points of the match with a penalty 30 metres out. A few minutes later MacGinty reduces the Sale deficit to one point with his second penalty from an almost identical position after Kyle Sinckler is penalised for the second time at the scrum. Before the game gets underway again Nic Auterac replaces Lewis Boyce who has to leave the field of playing following an earlier head injury.

Sale enjoy a period of attacking play without overly troubling the Quins defence and following a Sale scrum in the Quins half a De Klerk pass is intercepted by Alex Dombrandt who charges into the Sale half before play is called back by referee Wayne Barnes who adjudged Dombrandt to be in an offside position. MacGinty has no trouble converting the ensuing penalty from about 20 metres to take Sale into the lead for the first time, Sale 9 Quins 7 after twenty five minutes. Bit of a double whammy for Quins who concede three more points after Dombrandt was clearly seen to be in an onside from television replays. The lead is short lived however as Quins get back into their attacking rhythm and following several repelled attacks another trademark Care kick to the corner sees Jack Clifford gather the ball and touch down for the second try of the match. A good kick from Catrakilis moves the score on to Sale 9 Quins 14 after twenty eight minutes.

Plenty of crunching tackles coming from both sides but it was the high variety that led to yet another kickable penalty being awarded to Sale and again MacGinty was on target, 4 minutes to half time Sale 12 Quins 14. Sale set up a rolling maul from the restart and Quins are penalised but for some reason the penalty was reversed allowing Catrakilis to find touch half way into the Sale twenty two, might have been sensible to take the three points on offer perhaps? Quins win the line out but cannot make any headway against the Sale defence and eventually end up with a scrum about twenty metres behind the gain line. With the clock heading towards forty minutes Quins win the scrum, the ball goes from Care to Catrakilis whose pass is intercepted by Sale winger McQuigan who runs in from sixty metres out touch down for a try. MacGinty makes an easy conversion to take the half time score to Sale 19 Quins 14. So, one intercept try and four straightforward penalties leaves Sale with a comfortable lead and the Quins supporters very frustrated.

You would imagine that there would have been a lot of discussion in the Quins dressing room at half time concerning the amount of penalties conceded, although perhaps not as Quins are penalised within the first minute of the second half for a high tackle by Max Crumpton on a Sale centre. A more challenging kick for MacGinty for this one but once again he was on target to extend the Sale total to twenty two points. Quins see plenty of the ball as the match continues but are finding it difficult to seriously penetrate the Sale defence and when they do and Care kicks through the game is halted for treatment to James Horwill who is flat out and being attended by the medical staff.

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James Horwill In Need Of Attention

position of the ball when play was stopped. A bit more front row nonsense in the scrum results in a free kick to Sale allowing them to clear the ball from their twenty two. Quins make some headway but play is halted for a high tackle, Danny Care runs with the ball and kicks through towards the posts with Mike Brown in hot pursuit. The ball hits the post but is then carried over the line by MacGinty resulting in a five metre attacking scrum to Quins which is also the cue for the introduction of Marcus Smith. Sale are penalised at the scrum leaving a very straightforward kick for Marcus Smith to add three points to the Quins total, Sale 22 Quins 17 after 57 minutes. With a break in play, on the other side of the pitch from me, Wayne Barnes shows Kyle Sinckler a yellow card and from the replay Sinckler was seen to push De Klerk in the chest off of the ball, certainly unnecessary as well as bloody stupid.

Play continues and Smith kicks long into the Sale twenty two and the chasing Nathan Earle wins a penalty as Sale are penalised for holding on. A good time to take three points perhaps but the on field decision is to kick to the corner. Quins win the line out and after the resulting maul is stopped by Sale, Care chips the ball to the base of the posts but Sale get it safely to ground for a Quins five metre scrum. Phil Swainston replaces Jack Clifford for the scrum and although Quins win the ball they are slowly forced further and further back by the Sale defence until the ball is passed wide to Cadan Murley who gets within five metres of the line before the ball is spilled. A massive scrum by Sale as they drive over the ball results in a penalty which allows Sale to clear the ball to the twenty two. Despite being a man down Quins are beginning to apply pressure and their endeavours are rewarded with a scrum 20 metres into the Sale half. Francis Saili replaces Ben Taupui as Max Cruppton is replaced by Dave Ward.

The ball is won and Care and Smith break down the blind side but a chip by Smith just short of the line is intercepted by Sale who are then awarded another penalty as Symons is caught offside trying to retrieve the ball. As Quins have to again fight their way back into the Sale half, Symons is penalised for the second time within the space of a minute for a high tackle. Sale kick to touch which is the signal for the return of Sinckler and Clifford as Danny Care is replaced by Hildago-Clyne and Alex Dombrandt departs to be replaced by Mat Luamanu with eleven minutes left to play. As Sale make a fairly rare visit into the Quins half they are immediately awarded yet another penalty as Quins drift off side which gives MacGinty another chance to add to the Sale score. Although the penalty kick is deemed successful there was certainly claims from some of the Quins players that the kick had drifted wide, referee Barnes did not feel the need to check the kick. It all got very frantic in the last ten minutes and the Quins cause was not helped when Mat Symonds was shown a yellow card for not rolling away with five minutes of the game remaining. Another successful penalty kick from MacGinty takes the score to Sale 28 Quins 17 on 76 minutes.  A valiant rearguard action by Quins at the end as they run everything in an attempt to gain a losing bonus point before a speculative kick ahead by Earle is shepherded into touch with the clock in the red.

Without being disrespectful to Sale, you would have to say that was a game lost by Quins rather than a win by Sale although the scoreboard does not lie. If you give away seven penalties all within easy kicking distance and also play 15 minutes of the game with fourteen men you probably get what you deserve. On balance it usually pays to take the penalty kicks when on offer and if Quins had done that the result might have been quite different, especially the one at the end of the first half where Quins could have increased their tally by three points as against conceding seven. Plenty of endeavour from both sides and some great attacking rugby from Quins during the early stages and in the dying seconds when it was far too late. Sale did what they had to do and tey are always a difficult team to come up against on a Friday night. A win would have gone a long way to ensuring Quins a top four finish but now they have a lot of hard work to do to meet that goal. Easy to say that after the last couple of seasons we would have been more than happy to be in this position but still very frustrating when you lose a game like this in the way that we did. There has been a lot of criticism concerning the performance of Demetri Catrakilis but he is never going to be a Nick Evans or play with the flair of Marcus Smith, more of a “steady eddy” type of player. All in all not a terrible performance from Quins but they certainly need to work on the discipline aspects of the game. Just to round off the evening motorway closures made the journey home a bit of a pain, you sometimes have to ask yourselves why you put yourself through the stress of evenings like this.
Definitely need a win on Saturday when Northampton Saints visit The Stoop and then a home win against Tigers should just about be enough for a play off position. 


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Good report as ever, thanks!