Every point is going to be precious in the lower reaches of this year’s Premiership and this grim, low-scoring draw will hardly lift the sinking morale of Bath’s sodden supporters. Failing to beat the league’s bottom-placed side at home is rarely a positive sign and the club’s director of rugby, Todd Blackadder, made no attempt to apply a gloss to another frustrating performance.
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Blackadder freely conceded his side are “letting our supporters down in the way we’re playing” and acknowledged that sixth place in the table is a false indicator of Bath’s current position. In past years their next home game against Leicester on 30 December would have shaped the title race; now, with just four points separating the bottom seven sides heading towards Christmas, that traditional old fixture is starting to feel like a must-win relegation scrap.
In that respect the two points salvaged by Joe Cokanasiga’s converted try eight minutes from time were better than nothing but Bath, for all their investment and England squad members, have now won a mere three games out of nine this season. To quote Sale’s director of rugby Steve Diamond: “It’s going to be highly combative and a big-name club is going to go down.”
This game underlined why Diamond reckons that team will be someone other than the Sharks. Having weathered a heap of first-half pressure they led entering the closing 10 minutes through a try from their forceful South African No 8 Jean-Luc du Preez, converted by his brother Robert. It required some nifty footwork on the left touchline from the replacement Cooper Vuna to drag Bath back into contention, his sidestep and neat left-foot grubber falling nicely for Cokanasiga to add another important try to his growing collection.
There probably should have been other chances taken in the first half, when Bath failed to ram home their initial scrum advantage, but despite their overwhelming territorial advantage, the home side’s attacking efforts were depressingly slow and predictable. “You’re never going to wear down a team like Sale if you keep playing slow,” said Blackadder. “We’re not playing the sort of rugby we want to play.”
The upshot was a game for hardcore anoraks in absolutely every sense. In terms of wintry Sunday entertainment the scoreless first half made a trudge in the pouring rain around Bath’s Christmas market feel positively life-enhancing. The nearest thing to a surge of excitement came when a power cut knocked out communications between the referee Luke Pearce and his assistants, though it could just have been someone pulling the plug on the grounds of terminal boredom.
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There was such a total lack of spark or original thought it almost came as a surprise when a kick from Robert du Preez found some rare space and Denny Solomona appeared to have outpaced Cokanasiga to the ball, scooping it up to score in front of the clubhouse. On closer inspection by the television match official, however, the Sale wing was deemed not to have had sufficient control, which effectively summed up the first 40 minutes in a single phrase.
Just as the spectre of the first completely scoreless game in men’s Premiership history was starting to loom, however, Sale turned down a potential kick to the corner and finally broke the deadlock via the Du Preez brothers. With Bath’s Freddie Burns and James Wilson also missing two kickable penalties an away win was looking a strong favourite, only for Vuna to provide a lifeline with James O’Connor down and receiving treatment.
Sale, though, have lost just one of their last four league games and have now moved back above Newcastle, with Diamond predicting the tightest Premiership relegation dogfight since Bristol were relegated with seven wins and 36 points in 2002-03.
“Everybody’s in the same boat,” he said. “Somebody’s going to go down with 30-plus points by the look of it; teams are going to have to win eight or nine games to make sure they don’t go down. We’re on three and a draw so we need to win four or five more games just to get ourselves out of the fire. The fight’s going to continue right the way through to March and April.”
So will that team be Sale? “We’ve been in the Premiership for 25 years and there’s no reason we won’t be next season,” Diamond added. “I operate on 60% of the budget of other clubs and to get draws at places like this shows what we do behind the scenes.”
• This report was corrected on 4 December to say that four points now separate the bottom seven, rather than six, Premiership clubs