It’s potentially the last welcome to the Salford Community Stadium for a little while as we finish off our Premiership Ruby Cup pool stage campaign against Newcastle Falcons. 

Our place in this competition is still alive thanks to a slew of bonus points (in contrast to our Premiership fortunes) leaving us as the current best placed runner up, and while we can’t catch Newcastle at the top of the pool we can secure a quarter final place with a win (preferably a bonus point win!) today. That, however, is much easier said than done against a Steve Diamond coached Falcons team who have been, appropriately, flying in this competition so far including beating Sale up at Kingston Park earlier in the season and a 70 point thrashing of Caldy last week.  

While Newcastle were running in tries for fun against Caldy, we faced up against a Doncaster team here at home who had a bit of a score to settle after we’d snatched the win at the death in the reverse fixture earlier in the year. Before the game it’s fair to say we, and we assume most Sale fans, were feeling relatively confident that our home form would see us through this game but alas that confidence came back to bite.  

A very experienced Doncaster team including Sale old boys Joe Jones and Telusa Veainu, aswell as former Premiership stalwarts Logovi’i Mulipola and Semesa Rokoduguni. Despite a good start with an excellent try from Rekeiti Ma’asi-White, Sale failed to take their chances and Doncaster grew into the game. The big turning point was the aforementioned Rokoduguni nabbing an intercept try (rolling back the years!) and despite a calm finish from the prolific Obi Ene in the final minutes, a missed conversion meant Sale couldn’t get over the line to get the win.  

While it’s disappointing as a Sale fan (and no doubt as a player), it’s a great result for Doncaster and an encouraging one for the competition, where we also saw Bedford pick up a win against Premiership opposition. It shows that there is a strong and viable second tier of rugby in England and more competition between that level and the Premiership teams should be encouraged and facilitated as much as possible.  

Turning attention to today then, we know all about our Northern ‘neighbours’ Newcastle (for the Geordies reading, my tongue is firmly in my cheek!) with Steve Diamond coaching and a number of ex-Sale players in and around the squad. Their form in this competition speaks for itself and with two losses for Sale in a row at home, it gets no easier as we try to return to winning ways. It should, as always, be a feisty and physical game but also with the freedom and running rugby we’ve seen in this competition. As always we suspend our soft spot for Newcastle for 80 minutes, but we do genuinely hope that by the end both teams are looking ahead to a quarter final in the coming weeks! 

Enjoy the game, 

Alex & James