Sale get hard-earned win in France

Castres Olympique 16 Sale Sharks 20

Sale can keep dreaming of a stunning English-European double after their club’s hard-fought victory in France tonight.

The Guinness Premiership leaders ground out a 20-16 Heineken Cup win over Castres Olympique at Stade Pierre Antoine, and they go into next weekend’s return match at Edgeley Park with a 100% record after three matches in the tournament.

Scottish back-rower Jason White was immense as the Sharks pack subdued the much-feared Castres scrum, and the deadly boot of England fly-half Charlie Hodgson did the rest despite a strong finish from the French side.

The win puts the Sharks in the box seat in Pool One, and with home games against Castres and the Newport Gwent Dragons to come, they are hot favourites to be the first side to cement a quarter-final berth this season.

Hodgson opened the scoring with a penalty goal, and he had the final say of the first half with the conversion of Jason Robinson’s silky 40th-minute try.

It was not all one-way traffic, though. Castres boast All Black powerhouses Kees Meeuws and Carl Hoeft in the front row and a 20-metre rolling maul resulted in the opening try of the match through Uruguay lock Rodrigo Capo-Ortega.

The home side looked odds-on for a first-half lead until the 39th-minute sin-binning of scrum-half Mathieu Barrau led to Robinson’s typically elusive run in the last move of the spell.

White extended the visitors’ lead with a 48th-minute try, converted by the in-form Hodgson, but the loss of scrum-half Sililo Martens to the sin-bin for a high tackle proved costly.

The reliable Teulet pegged back three penalty goals to narrow the gap to 17-16 as the match entered its final 10 minutes, with Hodgson giving his side a small amount of breathing space with his fourth goal.

The 6,500-strong crowd roared their side home, but the Sharks’ defensive line held firm to snatch a rare and invaluable Heineken Cup victory in France.