London Irish 27

by Mike Crockett

SALE'S very own part-English, Welsh Kiwi, Shane Howarth, is certainly in the running for player of the year, and has done his chances no harm with Saturday's performance against London Irish.

Up until 92 minutes, it looked as though it was heading for a draw, but selfish Sale decided they did not

want to share the points for the second match in a row, and sparkling Shane landed a drop goal from 35 yards to secure the victory.

New Head of Rugby Adrian Hadley said after the game, "I don't think the players had anything to prove after events this week.

"We all knew that two more points would have made us mathematically safe."

"We played scrappy for parts of the game. The guys wanted to win it and went for it.

"The good thing is that we can improve on this result, because that we can play better than that," he added.

Irish drew first blood with a short range penalty after four minutes and went 10-0 up after Jarrod Cunningham converted Nick Harvey's ninth minute try in the corner.

On 12 minutes, Kevin Ellis made life easy for Howarth by planting his try under the posts.

Shane, in a man-of-the-match performance, added Sale's second try on the quarter -hour after skipping over some low-level tackles. His own short-range conversion took Sale to a four point lead.

The kiwi-Welshman landed a penalty from the half-way line to stretch the lead before Gallagher pulled one back for the visitors, with Cunningham converting again.

Another penalty for Sale restored their lead, but just before half-time, Irish full-back Conor O'Shea went over and Cunningham converted to put his team in at the break 24-20 up.

Fifteen minutes into the second half, some dogged persistence from Sale saw Phil Greening go over in the corner, and with Shane's third conversion, the home side were back in the driving seat.

In this period of the match, Sale enjoyed most of the possession and tried to make it count with several scintialting runs, but too often, they were stopped in their tracks.

A Jarrod Cunningham penalty was a late reply, and the match looked destined for a draw.

Cometh the minute - the 92nd - and cometh the man. Howarth capped off his man-of-the-match performance with a drop goal which took an absolute age to drop.

However, drop it did - on the right side of the bar and posts.

It's a pity he's not Scottish!

Seriously though, this win means Sale have avoided any hint of the drop, following the recent announcement of the one-down, one in a playoff situation.

And, with a European pay-day on the horizon, things are much rosier at Sale than they once were.

Sale: Mallinder; Moore, Baxendell, Yates, Hanley, Howarth, Ellis, Bell, Greening, Theron, Raiwalui, Murphy, Anglesea, A Sanderson, O'Cuinneagain.

Replacements: Smith, Shaw, Mather, Morris, Baldwin, Winstanley, Diamond.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.