Worcester Warriors 14-18 Sale Sharks, Sixways
Scorecard
Sale Sharks overcame a red card to Byron McGuigan as they went on to beat Worcester Warriors 14-18 in their Aviva Premiership face-off at Sixways on Friday.
Warriors headed into the game with two consecutive wins but despite having an extra player for the most part of the game, they could not quite push past Sale Sharks, who now move to the eighth position in the table.
Fly-half Aj MacGinty kicked a ninth-minute penalty that was a result of sustained pressure by Sale Sharks at the start and four minutes later centre Rohan Janse van Rensburg went past the line to extend the visitors' lead to eight points.
MacGinty failed with the conversion but the first 20 minutes continued to be dominated by Sale as the home side were lethargic and made numerous errors.
The first points for Worcester eventually came in the 26th minute when Chris Pennell slotted a penalty and by the 30th minute Sale Sharks lost McGuigan temporarily for deliberately knocking on the full-back's attempted pass. Worcester capitalised on the advantage and soon scored their first try in the 32nd minute that came from Josh Adams.
Pennell missed out on the conversion but instead, MacGinty kicked a penalty that provided Sale Sharks an 8-11 lead at half time.
The infringements from Sale Sharks continued in the second half as well with Faf de Klerk sin-binned for deliberately knocking down a Francois Hougaard pass, though Worcester did not manage to score any point in the next 10 minutes.
Pennell started the final quarter with a penalty to level the scores 11-11 and McGuigan was sent off in the 66th minute after collecting a second yellow card for a tip tackle on Bryce Heem with Worcester fullback kicking another penalty to take a three point lead.
But the lead did not last for long as replacement Jennings forced his way over in the corner to put his side in front before MacGinty fired over a splendid touchline conversion.
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