10:16pm Friday 19th March 2010
By Alan Feldberg
SALE 19, WASPS 8.
WASPS will find this defeat at Edgeley Park tonight extremely hard to stomach.
Apart from the fact that there is bad blood between the sides, apart from the fact that they were booed onto the pitch and mercilessly booed every time they kicked at the posts and apart from the fact that this loss seriously damages their top-four quest, this game will hurt because it was one Wasps simply frittered away.
Sale were absolutely there for the taking but the way Tony Hanks' team wasted their chances would have embarrassed an amateur side.
They could have had three tries inside the first 20 minutes but they converted none of them and as much as their profligacy discouraged Wasps it encouraged Sale.
The home team still needed a helping hand from the men in black and gold to score most of their points but, by the end, there could be no argument with result.
Wasps were buoyed before the game by the news that Serge Betsen, Joe Ward, Ben Broster and Will Matthews had all committed themselves to the club with new deals this week, but it was the immediate future occupying them as they pulled into a rain-soaked Edgeley Park for their rearranged clash with Sale.
Much has been made of 'pizzagate' – the controversially postponed match between the sides back in November when Wasps players were reported to be back on the bus eating pizza even before the game was officially called off for safety reasons.
Certainly the pitch had improved since then, although there was a suspicion before kick-off that a lick of green paint made it appear slightly more lush than it actually was.
Whatever the surface though, Wasps knew they had to dig their heels in and make sure this wasn't the night Sale turned their season around.
The first task was silencing the crowd, which greeted their arrival onto the pitch and Dave Walder's kick-off with a chorus of boos.
If anything though, Wasps contrived to embolden the hosts and encourage their supporters in the first half hour.
They actually started quite well and on at least three occasions came close to crossing the Sale line before 20 minutes was up.
Betsen had the first sniff with just seconds on the clock when he charged down Charlie Hodgson inside the Sale 22, but the ball bounced agonisingly away from him and beyond the in-goal area.
But if that was bad luck, the other chances were spurned because of bad play.
Twice in a minute David Lemi ended a Wasps attack with poor passes - the first went straight out of play on the Sale 22 and the second, after the Samoan had charged 50m upfield and only had to find Paul Sackey outside him for a simple finish, skidded low across the turf in front of the England winger just as his eyes would've been lighting up.
Moments later Lemi did pick his way over the line but Ben Jacobs' scoring pass was called forward and, amidst all that, Walder pushed a straightforward penalty wide from 30m after 15 minutes.
On another day, Wasps would have been leading by 20 points and the league's bottom side would have folded physically and mentally.
Even a lead of half that would probably have done the trick, but they were still on zero and at the other end of the field Charlie Hodgson was giving them a lesson in accumulation.
The home team had hardly got out their own half in the first quarter but virtually every time they did they won a penalty and the discarded England fly half landed both his long-range kicks to give Sale a staggeringly unlikely 6-0 lead after 25 minutes.
After that though, it was a different story.
Wasps got the jitters, Sale got the momentum and they were unlucky not to score under the posts before the interval.
Warren Fury's desperate tackle denied them, but they did add another penalty and as the players trooped off for the interval Wasps fans, huddled under raincoats in the exposed stand beneath the scoreboard, must have wondered why they'd bothered coming.
It didn't get much better in the second period. Danny Cipriani replaced Walder during half time and his scoring pass did send Jacobs over after 52 minutes.
But two minutes later stand-in scrum half Lemi fizzed a boot-high pass back to Cipriani, the fly half let it slip under his fingers and squirm out behind him and, despite a frantic attempt to scramble back to the ball, Richard Wigglesworth skipped over him to gladly scoop it up and run in unchallenged.
Hodgson converted, Cipriani replied immediately with a penalty and in the final quarter, with the visitors digging deep for a comeback that never came, he was easily the most dangerous player on the pitch.
But Sale had the bit between their teeth and when the fly half's clever chip to the corner bobbled away from Tom Varndell late on the dye was cast.
Incredibly, this result means Wasps have played six games against the bottom four sides in the Guinness Premiership, and lost four of them.
They only have five games left now – they will probably have to collect points from all of them to reach the semi-finals.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/trade_directory/