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Sale Sharks seal crushing win over Ospreys as Wales backrow stretchered off

By PA
Press Association

Sale Sharks ended the pool stage of the Champions Cup in impressive fashion after they secured a 49-10 victory over the Ospreys at the AJ Bell Stadium.

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The home side were dominant throughout but the first quarter laid the foundations as they physically overwhelmed their Welsh opponents, with Tom Roebuck’s try opening the scoring.

Although the home side missed a number of other opportunities, Arron Reed crossed the whitewash to give them a 14-3 lead at the interval.

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Ewan Ashman and Dan Du Preez then sealed the bonus point before Harri Deaves got one back for the United Rugby Championship side.

It proved to be just a consolation score, though, as the hosts crossed three more times through Curtis Langdon, Roebuck and Jack Metcalf to confirm the Ospreys’ European elimination.

With Sale’s passage into the last-16 already assured, their aim was to find the type of form which has so far eluded them in the Premiership, and they started with plenty of intent.

Reed had a score ruled out for an illegal clear-out while both Rob Du Preez and Lood De Jager knocked on over the line, which meant Roebuck’s try was the hosts’ only reward for their dominance.

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Alex Sanderson’s men were in the ascendency in both attack and defence, and it led to a second try as Reed finally got his moment.

The left wing was indebted to the work of Ben Curry and Bevan Rodd, however, as the flanker turned the ball over at the breakdown and gave it to the England prop.

Rodd sprinted clear and then showed outstanding skill to find the speedster on the outside, leaving Reed with the easy task of touching down unopposed.

The Ospreys had barely been in the Sale half but they finally built some pressure when Dan Evans scythed through the home side’s defence.

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Evans was brought down short of the line but they kept going through the phases and eventually earned a penalty which was kicked by Joe Hawkins.

Sam Cross unfortunately went down with a nasty-looking injury in the build-up to that score and was stretchered off.

There had been a high attrition rate in the first half, with a number of Ospreys players leaving the field for head injury assessments, while Sale’s Nick Schonert was replaced after suffering a lower-leg injury.

With the Welsh region having an already-depleted squad, it only hampered their chances further and they struggled in the second period.

Five minutes after the break, the Sharks extended their advantage thanks to a close-range Ashman effort before another fine move ended in Dan Du Preez sealing the bonus point.

To the visitors’ credit, they continued to battle and were rewarded when Deaves touched down on debut, but it was not enough to spark a comeback.

Instead, Sale crossed three more times in the latter stages as Langdon, Roebuck and Metcalf all went over to complete a dominant win.

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J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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