As others have said, an LBP up there is a good result.
Have to give a lot of credit to Sale. Sanderson doesn't like us (for whatever reason, his prerogative) and had his guys up for it. We rely on quick ball off the deck to really get the attack purring like we saw last week and they never let us have that. Curry is an animal. I like Kenningham and think he has a great future but last night showed the gap between him and someone like Curry and that's no disrespect to Jack, who can become as good, just clear as day when held up against the benchmark that there's development to be done before he gets there. Sale controlled territory and didn't let us get the quick stuff off the floor. We made a few more errors than usual and if more clinical, might have come away with more.
That said, they missed a hatful of kicks and should have buried us earlier. You can't give away 21 penalties and have 33% territory and expect to win. it's a surprise we got anything, looking at that. Limiting territory and controlling the clock is the blueprint for shutting us down, and we need to look at being streetwise enough not to get dragged into the gutter.
Nothing to get carried away about. The next two weeks we face two pretty similar teams so if we see progress and, say, 6-7 league points from the two games I don't think we can be upset at all.
While there are legitimate reasons that we otherwise lost the match, the forward pass for their first try was blatant and not truly checked. I know we get away with a few, but that's why the video ref is there. It was very similar to the one of ours that was called back last week. All you ask is consistency.
