Danny feels pain on his comeback
Cipriani down and out
THERE was no shortage of irony as ‘Oh Danny Boy’ piped through the AJ Bell Stadium’s sound system. Bath’s new No10 got knocked down but, contrary to the next line of the Chumbawamba lyrics, he struggled to get back up again. The debut was cut short.
Danny Cipriani’s return to rugby, after almost a year away from the sport, did not follow the script. Clobbered by Rohan Janse van Rensburg in the second half, the playmaker was hauled off for a head injury assessment, before watching an unlikely victory slip through his new team’s fingers.
Bath had clawed their way back from a 17-0 deficit, with 19 unanswered points, but they could not finish the job. In the final play of their second-half comeback, Cipriani’s understudy, Orlando Bailey, had a shot at victory but his penalty kick fell just short of the posts.
Relieved Sale boss Alex Sanderson admitted: ‘My heart rate was horrendous — I am sure they do it on purpose. I have DLPNP written on my hand — “Don’t let the pressure negate the pleasure”
— the pressure negated the pleasure today!
‘It should have been a 30-point game. We were a point down with five to go and found a way to win. That is their superpower — they don’t give up.’
Until the 35th minute, young scrum-half Raffi Quirke was on course to steal the headlines. Operating behind a dominant pack, he injected all of the tempo into the contest.
He was liveliest around the ruck, darting past forwards and catching defenders off guard with tap-and-go penalties.
There were no England coaches here at the AJ Bell, but word of Quirke’s display will no doubt have been filtering back to Eddie Jones, before he limped off with an injury.
The 20-year-old darted through a doglegged hole in Bath’s defence and offloaded for Byron McGuigan’s try, but that proved to be his final act.
‘Raffi’s on fire and the advice I’ve had so far about the injury is that he’ll be good to go,’ said Sanderson. ‘He’s only young and if he’s going to get fasttracked, it just depends how fast he gets fast-tracked.
‘He looks like he’s ready, doesn’t he? Some nines see the gaps, like George Gregan. Raffi’s got the ability to see them and go through them. He’s a Faf de Klerk in the making.’
With Ben Curry and Ben Spencer also cutting downbeat figures as they withdrew before half-time with injuries, there was an early reminder of the attritional nature of the Premiership. Sale’s physicality was there for all to see, with Akker van der Merwe’s lineout drive try and the hit-and-miss boot of Rob du Preez giving the hosts a 17-0 lead.
In the second half, the momentum swung. With Simon Hammersley in the sinbin, Cipriani kicked six points before his enforced exit. Bath fixed their ill-discipline and won three scrum penalties of their own, while Will Muir, Tom de Glanville and Sam Underhill made dangerous line breaks.
‘You want to win but equally you want to develop your game,’ said Bath director of rugby Stuart Hooper. ‘We were stressing Sale with ball in hand more than we would have done previously. Making line breaks is outstanding but when we make an outbreak down the edge, what’s the next play? You want to build pressure or score.’
Replacement prop Juan Schoeman scored after combining with Miles Reid, before quickfire penalties from Bailey gave Bath a two-point lead going into the closing stages.
Yet Sale struck back and, after all of the build-up had focused on Cipriani, it was Sale’s Kieran Wilkinson, a 21-year-old from Blackpool, who kicked the winner.