The Times Sport - UK (2020-08-15)

Sport Gallagher Premiership

beginning at 7.30pm and finishing at

full-time. The cacophony is quite

something.

Eight minutes from kick-off, the

man on the Tannoy announced Manu

Tuilagi. Not a solitary murmur for the

ten-year Leicester Tiger. “MIIIKE

BROWN”: nothing. The signing from

Sale, Chris Ashton, was introduced to

nobody, to nothing; loyal servant and

the tunnels, the changing and medical

rooms. The stage.

The stage where players strut their

stuff. Their theatrical counterparts

play to silent reverence, sportsmen to

the noise of an enthusiastic crowd. The

more noise, the better the game. The

rule’s not set in stone but it’s a useful

yardstick. But not last night, apart

from the constant communication,

Stuart

Barnes

Empty seats an uneasy sight as stage falls silent on rugby’s return

I was told to use the North Car Park.
The last time I parked my car for a
rugby game was also the North Car
Park; nigh on 23 weeks ago. But that
was THE North Car Park,
Twickenham. England were playing
Wales in front of 82,000 supporters.
There’s a surge of adrenaline when
England and Wales tangle.
Fully 160 days later I reversed into
the other North Car Park. Just across
the A316. No traffic, human or
motorised. Forty or so minutes from
kick-off and Faf de Klerk was passing
with his fellow South African, the fly
half Robert du Preez. The pop music

playing on the Tannoy sounded tinny.

There were no supporters making the

trek from one side of the footbridge

that links the Stoop and Twickenham,

club and country; no sense of

occasion. The players stretched as the

clock ticked past seven. Boris Johnson

wasn’t going to turn up and shake a

few hands as he had in the West

Stand, back in March.

Players were under strict

instructions. No huddle and heaven

forbid celebrating a try. The thought

of those swarming replacements not

diving into the dead-ball zone to join

in the celebrations raised a smile.

As for zones, they were green, amber

and red. As a member of the press I

entered via the amber zone. Forms

filled in, temperature tested. The green

zone for parking and BT’s kit. The red

zone — no longer a clichéd alternative

to saying the 22-metre area but the

very essence of the evening. The pitch,

captain, Chris Robshaw, to the sound

of silence. In the stands the press

were spaced out, figuratively, if not

literally. There was a sense of isolation

that had me, for one, staring wistfully

across the A316 to Twickenham.

Black Lives Matter. They always

have, but before the 23-week break

rugby didn’t feel compelled to show

its feelings. The world has changed

despite the blaring music on the

public address system accompanying

Marcus Smith’s repeated repertoire of

angled runs on to the ball.

You could see his class before a ball

was kicked in anger. Such a pity so

few could. It was grand to be back but

empty stands and coloured seats

where bums should be made for an

unnerving hour or so until Luke

Pearce blew the whistle to kick-start a

league in need of magic. Alas the

game proved as mundane as the

pre-match build up.

The Sale players

wore “Rugby

Against Racism”

T-shirts but were

allowed to make

their own

decision over

whether to take a

knee in a further

gesture of

solidarity

DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES

Sale made to pay penalty on

encouragement of player to player, the

bass of grunting in the scrum. How

would this weird transformation of the

game suddenly translate into gladiato-

rial aggression — especially with the

extra emotional distraction of the

Black Lives Matter statements that

were made before kick-off?

That moment was quick but fascinat-

ing. The Harlequins players retreated

into their half, formed a circle and all

went down to one knee. Sale, mean-

while, did it very differently: they

formed a line, wearing the Rugby

Against Racism T-shirts, and then four

players took the knee and the other 11

— eight of them South Africans —

remained standing.

The four who went down were Mar-

land Yarde, Tom Curry, Sam Hill and

Simon Hammersley. Immediately this

gave the look of a lack of unanimity

among the group — which is the very

impression that rugby was hoping to

avoid. Sale would answer that they

were all standing together with the

message on their T-shirts. This is a

conversation that is set to run.

The other enduring conversation will

be around the law interpretations. Here

was rugby in England duplicating the

laws as they have been redefined in

New Zealand, with the same high

penalty count from the early rounds

too — and it was Sale who found them-

selves on the wrong end of it.

This was the reason that Sale

could not get going. It was not the

crowd or the curious, cold atmos-

phere, it was the fact that Luke

Pearce, the referee, identified

the visiting team as being too

slow out of the blocks to

recognise the new game.

Too slow to roll away

in the tackle, in parti-

cular — by the quar-

ter-time water break,

Sale had already given

away eight penalties

and Harlequins were

6-0 up.

“We couldn’t get a

grip,” Diamond said

afterwards. “We were

just shooting blanks.”

That hardly contrived to make

an entertaining spectacle. Early

conclusions are that these inter-

pretations will, in time, speed up the

game, that they will work for the better

and that they will make someone like

Tom Curry even more effective than he

is already. Here, though, his eagerness

was penalised almost as much as it was

rewarded. Even after the water break,

Sale kept on conceding penalties. Their

first half was so disappointing that on

the stroke of half-time, when they were

awarded a penalty in front of the posts,

Robert du Preez pushed it wide.

They did come out the brighter in the

second half and quickly scored, a try

finished by Byron McGuigan who was

well worked into the corner. Their

chase, though, was quickly stalled when

they presented Harlequins with a gift at

the other end.

Harlequins soon turned the pressure

back on them and were attacking with

repeated drives. When Sale were finally

given hope by a Harlequins knock-on,

Du Preez elected the high-risk option

and launched a cross-kick to McGui-

gan. This was great in theory apart from

the fact that Mike Brown saw exactly

what was coming, intercepted the kick

and, though he finished inches from the

tryline, a yellow card to Simon Ham-

mersley and a restart later, Quins were

finally rewarded with the try with Scott

Baldwin coming up with the ball from a

lineout drive.

Diamond was soon so unimpressed

that by the time the last quarter rolled

round both his half-backs had been

removed, one of them the out-of-touch

Faff de Klerk. That was a victory in itself

for Harlequins, though they never com-

pletely killed off the Sharks and they

were given a minor scare at the end. Yet

no one needed persuading that they

deserved this. As Diamond said, Sale

were “delighted” to get a bonus point.

So this was a fine restart for Harle-

quins; Sale have a lot more to give. The

game has some way to go too. This was

predictable after five months away: a

stop-start, edgy, inaccurate, mildly

frustrating game of rugby. But it was

rugby nevertheless, and that is to

be celebrated.

Harlequins
16

Sale Sharks
10

Scorers: Harlequins: Try Baldwin 57min.

Conversion Smith. Penalty goals Smith 15, 20,

32.

Sale: Try McGuigan 44. Conversion R du

Preez. Penalty goal MacGinty 71.

Scoring sequence (Harlequins first) 3-0, 6-0,

9-0, (half-time) 9-7, 16-7, 16-10.

Harlequins M Brown; C Ashton, J Marchant,

J Lang, N Earle; M Smith, M Landajo (S Steele 68);

J Marler (S García Botta 68), S Baldwin (J Gray

76), S Kerrod (W Collier 68), S Lewies (D Lamb

75), M Symons, J Chisholm (T Lawday 64),

C Robshaw, A Dombrandt (W Evans 61).

Sale Sharks S Hammersley (sin-bin 56-66);

B McGuigan, M Tuilagi, S Hill, M Yarde

(D Solomona 59); R du Preez (AJ MacGinty 62),

F de Klerk (W Cliff 61); C Oosthuizen (R Harrison

52), A van der Merwe (C Langdon 59), WG John

(J Cooper-Woolley 52), J-L du Preez (J Phillips 72),

L de Jager, J Ross, T Curry, D du Preez (B Curry 59).

Referee L Pearce.

This was the strangest of rugby nights.
How could it be anything else? Not a
crackle of noise before the kick-off, not
the remotest sense of anticipation to
build the tension. It seemed nice and
warm — at least before the start. Danny
Care, who was not playing, chatted
happily to Manu Tuilagi — who was on
the opposing side. It all felt nice and
friendly but it was not a friendly at all.
At one point during the game, a tiny
posse of the Sale faction tried to get a
team chant going. Full marks for enthu-
siasm and all that, but so shrill!
And it was certainly not enough to
inspire Sale Sharks. They arrived here
with big names and high expectations,
but no superstar will be bigger than the
new law interpretations in this restart-
ed season because it quickly became
clear how influential they will be.
It is all very well recruiting Manu
Tuilagi but if you are presenting
repeated turnover gifts to the
opposition in such high numbers
then you are hardly going to
notice him.
Far more visible was
Marcus Smith, the Quins
No 10, whose clever
prompting with the
boot marched his
team to the corners
and kept Sale pinned
back. Paul Gustard,
his director of rugby,
talked afterwards of his
“unashamed desire and
ambition” to be the best
player in the world. Cer-
tainly, last night, he was
one of the best on the
pitch.
He responded well to
the usual conditions,
too. The sound ema-
nating from the
silence was the endless

Owen

Slot

Tuilagi’s debut was far
from a friendly affair

Penalties galore with

new breakdown rules

It didn’t take long for World Rugby’s

stricter guidance on refereeing the

breakdown to take effect last night

(Angus Oliver writes).

The new approach calls for “a

focus on player welfare and game

attractiveness” and in the opening

ten minutes both Sale’s Tom Curry

and Harlequins’ Chris Robshaw won

penalties when only momentarily

getting over the ball as they tried to

steal possession. There is now a real

onus on the ball-carrier presenting

the ball as quickly as possible.

The tackler also has the new duty

of immediately releasing the ball-

carrier and rolling away in the

direction of the touchline and both

sides were too often too slow in this

regard, conceding 17 first-half

penalties before Sale’s Simon

Hammersley was sent to the sin-bin.

The new normal will clearly take

some time to get used to.

The Sale full back Hammersley, who was sent to the sin-bin in the second half as

14 2GS Saturday August 15 2020 | the times