Sale sweep aside Stade Francais in Champions Cup opener
Sale produced a superb second-half show to open their Champions Cup campaign with a 28-5 victory over Stade Francais at AJ Bell Stadium.
The Sharks edged a feisty first period 6-5 with two George Ford penalties eclipsing a well-worked try from Stade skipper Jeremy Ward.
England back Ford landed a third kick from a scrum penalty before Sale extended their lead by finding space for winger Tom O’Flaherty to touch down.
Sale’s forward power told in the final quarter as Raffi Quirke freed Jonny Hill into the corner and Tom Curtis added the extras.
Player of the match Sam Dugdale put the gloss on victory by crashing over six minutes from time, with Curtis again adding the conversion.
Sale missed out on a fourth score and bonus point in the final minutes ahead of their visit to four-time champions Leinster next weekend.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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