1
Red card sees Sale Sharks bow out of Champions Cup in La Rochelle defeat
By Online Editors
Sale’s hopes of progressing to the European Champions Cup quarter-finals came to an end as they were beaten 30-23 by La Rochelle.
Tries from Tevita Railevu, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Geoffrey Doumayrou and Gregory Alldritt, along with 10 points from the boot of Ihaia West, secured a bonus point victory for the hosts.
Jean-Luc du Preez and Curtis Langdon scored Sale’s tries at the Stade Marcel-Deflandre, with AJ MacGinty and James Williams kicking 13 points between them.
Continue reading below...
Du Preez opened the scoring for Sale after seven minutes as he powered over the line from short range after a period of sustained pressure by the visitors, with MacGinty adding the extras.
The visitors kept building the pressure and La Rochelle were temporarily reduced to 14 men when blindside flanker Kevin Gourdon was sent to the sin bin for an intentional knock-on.
MacGinty kicked a further three points to extend Sale’s lead to 10 points but La Rochelle hit back with two tries in the space of three minutes.
Former All Blacks scrum-half Kerr-Barlow put in a speculative up and under which was gathered by Levani Botia, who was brought down five metres short of the try line. The ball was recycled and put through the hands with a well-timed pass from Doumayrou putting Railevu over at the corner.
Sale were immediately back on the attack but a sloppy pass from Will Cliff was intercepted by Kerr-Barlow, who ran in unopposed from 40 metres out with West converting to put the hosts into the lead.
MacGinty and West exchanged three points before a long-range penalty from Williams meant Sale turned around with a 16-15 lead.
La Rochelle started the second half strongly and after a number of powerful carries Kerr-Barlow raced clear before drawing his man to put Doumayrou over. West converted to give the hosts a 22-16 lead going into the final quarter.
"6120915057001"]
Trending on RugbyPass
2
All Blacks XV player ratings vs Munster
3
Suaalii strikes awe as Wallabies lose midfielder
4
Scott Robertson responds about handling errors
5
Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
Go to comments