Sale loud and proud achievers
Chris Hewett finds a Cheshire club with grand ambitions for rugby in the north, and today's Pilkington Cup semi-final at home to Harlequins could be the start
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Your support makes all the difference.There is no earthly point in attempting to deny that Manchester United are bigger news than Sale Rugby Football Club. Ryan Giggs, Roy Keane and David Beckham are indisputably more glamorous than David Rees, John Fowler and Steve Diamond; Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's fresh-faced exuberance captures the imagination more readily than John Mitchell's cauliflower ear, and you can be sure that for every unsolicited pair of knickers sent to Dewi Morris by adoring woman fans, Eric Cantona receives an entire warehouse-full of exotic lingerie.
In fact, the two clubs have nothing in common apart from geographical proximity. No more than half a dozen miles apart, they are unlikely neighbours - the Old Trafford boot room is probably more spacious than the pokey little lean-to that passes for Sale's home ground at Heywood Road - and not even the most blindly optimistic member of Manchester's rugby minority dare dream of a narrowing of the popularity gap.
It could, however, narrow today as Sale host Harlequins in a Pilkington Cup semi-final of marked significance. Just for once, Mitchell's men will hold the undivided attention of a sporting multitude for whom the handling game begins and ends with Peter Schmeichel. With no United game to generate the customary Saturday afternoon fever, rugby finds itself on centre stage, with the spotlight burning brightly in its eyes.
Not that too many Mancunians will be taking in the live experience. The Heywood Road capacity is a derisory 4,700, not including the inevitable handful who slip unnoticed over the fence, and if this game were a romantic one-off - had Sale fluked their way Chesterfield-style into the last four thanks to a quirk of the draw - few outsiders would be inclined to give a proverbial fig. "So what if Will Carling is playing today?" they might ask. "And who the hell is Jos Baxendell when he's at home?"
But Sale, one step away from Twickenham and pushing hard for a place among the European elite in next season's Heineken Cup, are wholly worthy of the wider support they crave. They have proved it on the pitch, thanks to the uncomplicated All Black values of player-coach Mitchell, and are now making things happen off it.
According to Howard Thomas, a chief executive as articulate as he is ambitious, Cheshire's finest are on the threshold of a golden age that will knock the era of Fran Cotton, Steve Smith and Tony Bond, the club's triumvirate of early 1980s England internationals, into a cocked hat.
Thomas has spent the last week finalising details of a lucrative investment deal with an as yet unnamed backer. The move will be considered by members on Thursday week and if approval is forthcoming, backwater status could soon be a thing of the past. "We're very satisfied with the deal currently on the table, which is as strong as any so far signed by an English club," Thomas said this week.
"The amount of money involved is very substantial indeed and if the members agree to go with it, we will be in a strong financial position to improve our ground facilities, which everyone accepts is our biggest problem.
"There is no doubt that Heywood Road as it stands cannot sustain the sort of high-profile, high-pressure rugby we want to play. With the right sort of marketing we could have shifted 15,000 tickets for this semi-final, and I must admit that when we landed the home draw, our immediate thought was to move the match to a much bigger stadium.
"But when we took on board the fact that we were entitled to only 12.5 per cent of the gate, we thought: `No, the main thing is to go out there, win the game and enjoy the prestige of reaching Twickenham.' From an atmosphere point of view, the old ground will be good for us and not so good for Quins."
Thomas is convinced than Manchester can become "an oval ball city as well as a round ball one" and sees no reason why, with a decent venue, Sale should not grab their fair share of support from the most liveliest sporting conurbation outside London. "We've got options. We might develop the existing site, investigate ground-share possibilities - the Old Trafford cricket ground has already been discussed and is bound to crop up again - or, perhaps, go for a new, purpose-built stadium. Whatever we decide, we need to come up with something that reflects our improving status as a leading English club."
Not only does this afternoon's game give Sale an even-money shot at reaching their first knock-out showpiece - two previous semi-finals, the last in 1976, ended in defeat - but it also provides a perfect point-making platform. Thomas is not the only man at Sale who detects an unacceptable bias towards southern clubs but he is certainly among the most outspoken on the subject.
"We've got a chip on our shoulder about it, and justifiably so. God knows why, but anything that happens north of Leicester seems to confuse people down south. I'm not even sure Jack Rowell knows where Sale is; no one has played better than Dave Baldwin or Jim Mallinder this season but do they get picked for England? Do they heck.
"There is so much ignorance of northern rugby. At the start of every season we are among the favourites to go down, but at the end of each season we are in the top four or five. Funny that. Perhaps if we beat Quins we will start attracting the interest we deserve.
"This club is built on focus, desire and a phenomenal team spirit, and it is our task now to get the people of Manchester behind us. I was asked the other day to compare Sale with a leading soccer side and I came up with a cross between Wimbledon, for their Crazy Gang spirit, and Newcastle, for the huge ambition and potential. I think that's a very exciting position for us to be in."
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