Finally! Bath hold nerve to see off Sharks

BATH are one victory away from winning the Premiership for the first time after surviving a Sale comeback, but they are likely to be underdogs against a Northampton that has been a couple more years in the making.

- PAUL REES

But what Bath have shown in the last two years under Johann van Graan is a burgeoning self-belief. Northampton will have more attacking threats than Sale and will threaten the gainline more in attack and defence, but the club that dominated the first 10 years of the league era in England has rediscovered the art of winning and will take some stopping.

There was a point in the first half when it looked as if Sale would be overwhelmed, and not just because they were trailing by 13 points. Without Manu Tuilagi, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Hyron Andrews, who failed a late fitness test, the Sharks struggled to get over the gainline.

A lesson of the first semi-final was that physical superiority invariably tells on the scoreboard and Sale found themselves drifting for a period as Bath, urged on by a capacity crowd hungry for success, played at a high tempo after bossing the breakdown.

Sale are known as one Premiership's of the more physical sides and had they secured more try bonus points they would have enjoyed home advantage yesterday, but for a while they found themselves stranded in a tactical no-man's-land.

They lacked the front foot ball to allow George Ford to dictate the play but it was strange to see them resorting to the air after just one drive. It may have been the wind which Sale played into in the opening 40 minutes, but Gus Warr's box-kicking gave his chasers little chance, unlike his opposite number Ben Spencer's.