Beaten Sale have reacted furiously to the pitch invasion that took place midway through the first half of Saturday’s Gallagher Premiership final at Twickenham. The match was tied at six-all when an injury to Seam Maitland on one side of the pitch coincided with referee Luke Pearce signalling a knock-on restart on the other.
However, it was at this moment that two Stop Oil protestors managed to evade the pitch-side security and they both dispersed orange dust before some players showed their displeasure, particularly Sale skipper Jono Ross who appeared as he if was on the verge of throttling one of the protestors.
In the end, the trespassing pair were dragged away much to the disgruntlement of the 61,875 attendance, with some of the crowd pelting the protestors with drink as they were led away down tunnels in opposite corners of the stadium.
Wilkinson vs Farrell
When play did restart with a scrum on halfway, the Sharks were caught napping as Ben Earl motored down the blindside with Ross slow to react and a kick from the supporting Alex Goode generated the chaos that ended in a penalty try and Tom Curry being yellow carded for preventing Max Malins from scoring.
Sale reacted well to that concession, hitting back with a try in the 10-minute first-half spell that Curry was missing, and they were to eventually find themselves 23-25 ahead with 13 minutes of the final remaining before two Saracens tries clinched them the 35-25 win.
Sharks boss Alex Sanderson sidestepped blaming the concession of the penalty try and the Curry yellow card as a reason for their defeat, but skipper Ross, who was playing his final match before retirement, was still livid with the protestors when speaking at the post-match briefing. “I don’t agree with what they are doing,” he said about the Stop Oil campaign that has been gaining notoriety in recent months for its interventions at a variety of sports events.
“I don’t agree with it at all. I don’t want to get into it. I don’t agree with it. It’s completely against everything I believe in and then to come into sporting events and ruin sporting events week in week out, I don’t agree with it, I don’t agree with what they stand for. That is where I will leave that.”
Sanderson said: “I don’t understand why it did happen. Obviously, my reaction was, ‘What’s the next job? I can’t run on and throttle him myself. But it did create a break in the game and they scored off the back of it.
“I am not saying that is the game, but it just shows the intensity of concentration you need to be able to switch off and switch back on – and that (disruption) was certainly something unexpected that could have clouded our concentration.”
What was the verdict from the winners’ enclosure about the pitch invasion? “Probably a bit less technical than what you are trying to make out,” quipped Saracens captain Owen Farrell. “It was, ‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’
“Some people got pelted with I don’t what it was. Orange dust? I don’t know. We have seen it before. Not here, but I guess this is a stage for them to do what they have been doing. It wasn’t too long before the game got going again but yeah, it [the protest] was a bit different.
