Sale vs Connacht Sat Oct 20th 3PM

Best I'm hoping for today is to keep the pool alive. Denying them a bonus would be a good result in my mind but really we dropped the ball not picking up 5 last week.

Next Friday is huge for our season. Allen Clarke seems to have got the Ospreys going again but also they've had a fairly nice start to the season fixture wise. Games against Ospreys and Cardiff are big swing matches anyway but I think a result in ospreys gives us huge momentum for a favourable run of fixtures after that.

sligsup wrote:

connachta wrote: Look any Connacht team would have struggled today, Sale won the mind game by taking 5 and us only 4 last week. I understand the Pro14 focus after those results, and Sale huge interest in this trophy

BUT We're still in the little pronvince syndrom. Others don't throw away 3 or 4 Academy guys (+ 3 or 4 developement ones) against a 100% full-team away from home, and without international helpers (Marmion, Aki, Roux).
And say a likely very bad day "will be forgivable" is IMO the wrong approach. It's not good for the young guys, it's destructive.

Yeah I know we had no real choice than resting Carty Aki and Roux, but we shouldn't hide behind fake hope...

I think we should be complimenting young Fitzgerald since he joined that the management believe he is good enough and earned the right to be selected

Is he here by his own merit,
or because Carty didn't have a single minute of rest, Ronaldson injured and Horwitz too rusty to play a whole hour vs such a team?

Probably a mix of both, at least he's considered better there than moving Godwin to 10. But as we rest Aki, Godwin was busy at centre...

Tall Paul wrote: I will be happy with a bonus point loss or a draw today.

Scoring 4 tries is IMO more likely than staying within 7 points.

But All I want is avoiding Saracens scoreline, try to get a point in Swensea, and win, win, win, after ...

So we matched Main Sale team from min 0 to 40 and from 60 to 80. But conceeded 21 points after the break. Bad old stuff

Thanks to the lads for the stream. Hard to get a full view of the game from it but was good to be able to see it all the same.

Thought we were doing really well up until the turnover which led to the try before half time. Again early in the 2nd half we got a major turnover and then I think Tiernan O'Halloran dropped the pass back to him to clear the lines. 5 metre scrum from there the try was inevitable. Straight away from the kick off a poor kick by Fitzgerald who looked to have a good first half from what I could see left us exposed and Sale were able to score and then just when we looked like we might get back in we threw an intercept close to their line which resulted in a yellow card and a few minutes later the bonus point try.

Very frustrating viewing as we were well in the game most of the way but if you turn over the ball as cheaply as we did for all 4 tries at this level you will be punished.

We move on quickly to Ospreys and hopefully the decision to go with a weakened team here will be justified.