Kick fest at Falcons was excruciating says James
SALE centre Sam James says last Friday’s 15-13 defeat at Newcastle was “the kick up the arse” they needed.
The Sharks came off second-best in the battle of the boot as both sides unashamedly kicked the leather off the ball for 80 minutes.
James’ deft touches in midfield and the finishing prowess of people like Denny Solomona were redundant skills on a night when the Falcons were content to win ugly.
“For us centres and the forwards, it’s just a big shuttle game watching the kicks go overhead, and running back ten metres,” James said. “You then watch another one go over and run back another ten metres and so on.
“It’ll be quite nice to have a break from it, it’s not the way we want to play. We want to challenge teams by going through the phases. That’s the only way you can break down defences these days unless you force an error from a kick.
“The kicking game kind of frustrated us,” he added. “Once we got hold of the ball, then we felt like we had to do something with it rather than settling ourselves down and keeping hold of it for a while in order to create the space.”
James, 26, is hoping for an improved attacking display down at the Brentford Community Stadium, London Irish’s new home ground. I think in both the Newcastle and Northampton games (a 32-23 win) we haven’t given a full attacking performance,” he admitted.
“We turned up in the first half against Northampton and put a couple of tries on them and then we went off the gas pedal.
“At Newcastle, we just didn’t turn up at all in the first half. But we came out and made it look simple for Cobus Wiese’s try. It was exactly what we trained for. We kept our shape, got to an edge and the opportunity arose.
“But we didn’t do that enough. A couple of times we got the ball out wide when they (wide players) only had five metres to work in and they got pushed into touch.
“I think that game was perhaps the kick up the arse we needed.”
By the law of averages, the Sharks won’t have to score too many tries to beat Irish. The Exiles have managed only two in open play in the last six league meetings.
But Cheshire-born James believes they are a much stronger outfit than the one that was beaten 39-0 by the Sharks in March.
“They’re a quality side,” he said. “With the players they’ve brought in, they are knocking at the door and trying to break through.
“They’re off the back of a good win against Leicester and they’re in a new ground. We’re not going to take them lightly.
“We’re going to have to take it to them if we want to stand any chance of winning the game.”