Quite how Sale won this game will remain a sore point in the West Country for a long time. Bath had all sorts of reasons to curse this agonising defeat, not least their inability to finish off a team who spent virtually the entire last half-hour of the contest trapped in their own 22, for 10 minutes with 14 men, and had to survive one of the most prolonged scrummaging sieges of recent times.
Bath were understandably aggrieved that nine scrums and half a dozen penalties failed to yield them a penalty try under the posts instead of a 75th-minute score wider out for the hooker Ross Batty which left George Ford with an awkward angled conversion. Ford could not find the target and missed two desperate late drop goals as well, allowing the Sharks to secure a fourth successive away league win and move within four points of third-placed Bath with four regular-season games to play.
Mike Ford, Bath's head coach, admitted afterwards to being 'frustrated beyond belief' with the interpretations of the referee, Dean Richards, who sin-binned the replacement prop Henry Thomas but declined to punish the creaking Sale front row any further.
'I don't know how he didn't go under the sticks,' said Ford Sr. 'There were seven consecutive penalties and the referee's just got to change [players'] behaviours. They tell me they can't go under the sticks unless the scrum goes backwards. But how can the scrum go backwards if they keep collapsing it?'
It was probably inevitable that a game billed as a showdown between two England international fly-halves should end up embroiled in front-row controversy. On a cool night the contest between Ford and Danny Cipriani was always going to be interesting, particularly with the England attacking skills coach, Mike Catt, in attendance and a summer tour to New Zealand looming large. Steve Diamond, Sale's director of rugby, reckons Cipriani should be picked and the latter's four match-winning penalties here from four attempts, having shaken off a midweek bug, did nothing to weaken his cause.
Cipriani is now 26 and the last of his seven England caps seems a long time ago. Finally, however, he has recognised that innate talent alone is not always enough and his commitment to the Sale cause was indisputable. Stuart Lancaster may still need some more convincing but, with Gloucester's Freddie Burns having lost form, the chances of him featuring either as a midweek tourist or in an England jersey against the Barbarians at the end of the season are much less remote then they were six months ago.
At this rate it could also be the Sharks who make the play-offs, rather than a Bath side who have spent the entire season in the top three and have now lost their Springbok flanker Francois Louw with an ankle injury that may rule him out of most, if not all, of his side's remaining fixtures
. Despite the late withdrawals of skipper Dan Braid (dead leg) and Mark Cueto (calf) Sale were good value for their 9-6 half-time lead and their defensive resolution in the second half late on was remarkable. 'As we've proved time and time again, we fought like dogs to get the result,' said Diamond, Sale's director of rugby, who has also been around long enough to appreciate a touch of good fortune when it materialises, a reward for his side's tortuous 10-hour trip down the M6. Bath's replacements made a discernible difference and t
The sustained 14-minute period of pressure close to the Sale line could also have produced a try for Leroy Houston, who believed he had touched down only for the television match official to disagree. Amid mounting tension Thomas, who is joining Bath this summer, was finally binned before Batty, belatedly, crashed over on the left. Ford's conversion, however, flew wide as did his brace of drop-goal efforts and a couple of earlier penalties. On such moments can entire seasons turn.
Bath Abendanon; Watson, Devoto (Henson, 66), Eastmond, Rokoduguni; Ford, Stringer (Young, 49); James (Catt, 59), Batty, Wilson (Perenise, 59), Hooper (Day, 62), Attwood, Garvey, Mercer (Fearns, 55), Houston.
Sale T Arscott; Brady, Leota, Tuitupou, Miller; Cipriani, Peel; Roberts (Harrison, 64), Jones, Cobilas (Thomas, 64) Ostrikov, Mills, Paterson, Seymour, Gaskell.
Pens Cipriani 4.
Sin-bin Thomas, 67
Referee D Richards (RFU). Attendance 11, 837
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