Man Behind the Match: Jason Robinson and the 2006 Premiership final
When Robinson joined the Sharks in 2000 they were simply also-rans. It’s no coincidence that six years later they had won two European trophies and been crowned English champions.
“He has to be right up there,” says Stuart Turner, a colleague of Robinson in the 2005/06 Premiership-winning team. “The sheer volume of games he played in both league and union and the standard he maintained over that time.
“Jason had been at Sale for six months when I joined. Many find it hard to adjust coming from league but it was clear that he had no problems settling in. He had a good sense of humour, a bit of a practical joker, but the main thing was that he was a model professional.
“Whatever he lacked he would work on and keep working until he mastered it.”
That title-winning campaign saw Robinson in mesmeric form as Sale became the first club from the North-west, and just the second from north of Leicester, to be crowned English champions. They were also the first club since the play-offs were introduced in 2003 to win the title after finishing top of the regular season table.
The season before Sale had reached the semi-finals, only to be outclassed by eventual winners Wasps at Adams Park as Lawrence Dallaglio and Co sealed a third straight title. A year later it was very different, and it was Robinson who scored the only try of the game at Edgeley Park to get his side to Twickenham.
It was a team effort – Turner recalls a crunching tackle by Sebastien Chabal on Dallaglio as being a turning point – but it was Robinson who sealed the deal.
“It was typical of him in that semi-final,” recalls Wales centre Mark Taylor, who had joined the Sharks that season. “It was nip and tuck and the one chance all game fell to Jason, he turned the full-back (Mark van Gisbergen) inside out and scored. He was just the ultimate game-breaker.”
The big day arrived and a massive contingent of Sale fans, by far the largest in the club’s 145-year history to that point, arrived in the rain at Twickenham to take their places in the 58,500 strong crowd. It may have been wet but this, for an estimated 20,000 people from the north, would be their day in the sun.
Charlie Hodgson struck the first blow with a penalty after concerted pressure and then executed a perfect cross-kick inviting Mark Cueto to touch down in the corner.
Taylor admits: “We had said before the game that if we could get our noses in front we always sensed that it would be tough to beat us. It would have taken a huge effort to rock us and when ‘Cuets’ scored that try we just felt we were destined to win.”
Turner agrees that utter self-confidence was coursing through the veins of the Sharks at the time: “Yes, we felt we were the best side in the league that year and I never felt we would lose.”
Even so, a Leicester response was to be expected; this is the Tigers after all, perennial contenders for the big prizes and it’s a tribute to that Sale team that such belief was evident against the arch competitors from the East Midlands.
Turner adds: “We had drawn with them at Welford Road, won at Bath and won at Castres in the Heineken Cup. We had proven ourselves in massive away games.”
Taylor adds: “Looking back, it was always two sides – Wasps and Leicester – who were the teams to beat, the ones you were competing against. We had beaten Wasps at home, we had a strong forward pack and, behind, Charlie was there to control the game. Then we had great players who had been signed who could break things up. I was playing with Elvis Seveali’i , who had that magic about him. It was a great team to be a part of. I was the ‘steady Eddie’ and then we had Jason behind me.”
The dream start for Sale was tempered when it was a case of the biter bitten… ‘charge down Charlie’ Hodgson saw an attempted clearance battered down by rampaging Irish flanker Shane Jennings and Ollie Smith kicked on. Lewis Moody bore down on the loose ball and just managed to get his fingers on it to the satisfaction of the television match official.
Andy Goode converted but Sale showed their potential to be champions by responding almost instantly. Richard Wigglesworth, who was only in the team due to an injury to Sililo Martens, was continually worrying incumbent England scrum-half Harry Ellis and one of his darts led to Goode being caught in possession and it was Magnus Lund’s turn to kick and chase.
Geoff Warren, the busy TMO, was called upon for a third time by Dave Pearson to adjudicate and gave the metaphorical thumbs-up for the Anglo-Norwegian flanker to celebrate the highlight of his career. Hodgson failed with the conversion but landed a penalty at the half-hour point, only for Goode to reply in kind.
Sale needed some more impetus and Hodgson provided it, bewildering the Leicester defence with sleight of hand and a body swerve to send Spanish wing Oriol Ripol through on a glory run to the line. It was all coming together for Robinson and his side.
“Charlie had a brilliant year,” says Turner. “He was the best player around – kicked well, passed well and a supreme tactician. He would run games.”
Hodgson’s place-kicking on this occasion couldn’t match his general play but no matter, Sale were 13 points ahead at the break, the foot needed to be kept firmly on the accelerator and it was time for Robinson to inspire with words as well as deeds.
“Jason was a talker,” reveals Taylor. “I first met him on the 2001 Lions tour to Australia. He just struck me as a really nice person but he has always been a voice in the changing room. He talked a lot but it was more than that – he was a tough man, tackling, going on crash balls, he would not expect anyone to do something he wouldn’t do.”
Sale were good to their skipper’s words, stretching further ahead through two Hodgson penalties either side of a Goode three-pointer.
The Sale pack was exerting its influence on the normally pre-eminent Tigers eight. Chabal, or ‘Sea Bass’ as he was known to all at Sale, was doing his passable impersonation of a pirate, Chris Jones was winning his lineouts, Turner, Andy Titterrell and Lionel Faure were having an edge on the more celebrated Graham Rowntree, George Chuter and Julian White in the front- row. When Titterrell and Turner were hauled off with 30 minutes to go, Sebastien Bruno and Barry Stewart simply took up the mantle.
And then there was another Jason playing a strong man role in the back-row, as Turner recalls: “Jason White was the player of the year that season. He was just superb and worked well with Sea Bass. Chabal had his magnificent games, but would also have ones when he did nothing, but when he was going he was a great player for us.”
Hodgson knocked over his fifth penalty on 63 minutes and popped over a short-range drop-goal between the uprights seven minutes later. Leicester were sunk, despite Jim Hamilton dotting down in the closing stages for a try that was scant consolation to a well-beaten side.
Appropriately it was the Sharks who made the final statements. Hodgson raised a haul of 23 points (only bettered in a Premiership final by Van Gisbergen’s 26 the year before) and Chris Mayor rounded off an exemplary performance by the Sharks with a late try.
Hodgson, rather than raise a personal quarter century of points, offered the ball to Mayor’s fellow replacement Valentin Courrent, in his last appearance for Sale before departing for Toulouse. The Frenchman completed the job and Pearson’s shrill final blast of the whistle was drowned out by the delirious folk from Lancashire, Cheshire and all parts in the North-west.
“We were a closeknit team, but success helps that, and it was nice to enjoy the moment with each other while going round seeing the crowd,” remembers Taylor. “From the off when I arrived at Sale I noticed that the crowd at Edgeley Park had a close relationship with the players – it felt like a family. It was great to be a part of it and I hope they get the same atmosphere at the new stadium.”
It was a triumph for coach Philippe Saint-Andre and Brian Kennedy, who had spent £9m in a quest to lift the club from relative obscurity to the ultimate in English rugby. It was the first time the former France captain Saint-Andre had been on the winning side at Twickenham as a player or a coach.
This was much more than a one-off success as some may call it. It was the perfect example of a talented group coming together at the right point in their careers and one of the bastions of the union game, in what is generally perceived to be rugby league country, reaped the benefit: “This was huge for Sale,” says Turner, who now coaches Cheshire club Caldy in National 2 North.
“Certain clubs seem to be able to churn their sides out, such as Tigers with their fantastic infrastructure, but Philippe and Brian signed great players to make it happen for us. Everybody peaked and it wasn’t just about the starting XV. People like Alex Sanderson, Lund and Wigglesworth were not first-choice but would come in and do a job.”
Taylor adds: “Yes, I remember Wigglesworth made a really nice break in the final and that’s what happens when there is confidence within a team and it is performing well. Players can ship in and out of the team and it doesn’t suffer.
“We played the wet weather well, matched them physically up front and we had Hodgson providing the control so very well, pulling the strings. He was a top player to play alongside.”
It was left to the man among men, Robinson, to climb on to the platform and hold aloft the Premiership trophy. Sale had become just the fifth different team to become champions of England since the leagues were introduced in 1987.
Robinson, who was the first player to win Grand Finals in both rugby codes, is given the ultimate compliment: “If he had been in union all the time, throughout his career, I think he would have been considered as the best player ever.”
Robinson hung up his club boots at the end of the following season, a campaign when Sale failed to ignite and had to cope with the other end of the scale. He had come up with the goods when Sale were riding the wave and plumbing the depths, cementing his greatness in the mind of Turner: “What sticks out for me when I think of Jason Robinson was that last season for Sale. He scored in the last few seconds against Bath which secured our place in the Premiership. When it mattered he produced.”
