After a hard-fought 28-24 victory for Sale over Harlequins in Sunday’s Prem Rugby fixture, Planet Rugby selects five takeaways from the round three action.
The top line
In the end, Harlequins’ emotional backlash following their chastening start to the new 2026/27 season only got them so far and they were left nursing an agonising four-point loss after being in the lead for 70 minutes at the CorpAcq Stadium.
They had made seven changes to their starting XV, including the recall of fit-again Marcus Smith following his finger injury, for a trip to a Sale outfit showing two alterations: Elia Canakaivata starting his first Prem game with Jacques Vermeulen banned and Christ Tshiunza a late call-up for the ill Tom Curry.
Sale had provided the template in how to successfully bounce back from adversity, impressively winning at Saracens after their opening day flop at home to Bristol, and a pent-up riposte from Harlequins was anticipated following their loss to Bath and their schooling at Gloucester.
The opening exchanges ended with Quins 17-7 up following a third-minute opener from Sam Riley and two from Smith on eight and 19 minutes. Canakaivata’s 11th-minute try was Sale’s reply amid later regret that was Arron Reed knocking on and Courtney Lawes getting denied a lineout catch five metres out.
The opening half then finished with Harlequins ruing three missed chances, Smith on 28 when tackled by the scrambling Tom O’Flaherty, Jack Kenningham two minutes later for grounding short of the line and then Riley having a 43rd-minute foot in touching diving for the corner.
It meant that rather than being a mile ahead, the Londoners had to settle for just a three-point, 14-17 interval lead as Gus Warr added Sale’s second converted score on 38 minutes. Riley, though, did go on to grab his second – and Quins’ bonus-point fourth – try off a 53rd-minute maul not long after Tyrone Green was denied on the other side of the pitch.
It was looking grim up north for the lacklustre hosts, but Sale stubbornly reeled the margin back to three points again with Ben Bamber’s 63rd-minute converted try and then took the lead with a 73rd-minute penalty try. That cost Quins a yellow, and they ended with 13 players due to the game going to uncontested scrums.
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Hip drop call
The outcome hinged on a 72nd-minute referee call that wasn’t controversial; it was that referee Christophe Ridley was 21 days ahead of time when initially making the wrong decision. From November 1, the hip drop will be implemented to penalise tacklers who use their bodyweight to pull a player to ground and drop onto the legs of a ball carrier from behind.
That was what George Ford did when hauling Chandler Cunningham-South to the floor after the Harlequins back-rower had bagged an intercept off the Sale out-half.
Ridley initially decided it was a penalty to Harlequins, who at the time were protecting a three-point lead. However, the decision was reversed as the referee realised the hip drop law doesn’t come into force for another three weeks.
The knee drop ruling, the other change made by World Rugby, has been in effect since October 5, but for some unexplained reason, there is a wait for this hip drop stuff to be penalised.
It left Ridley instead penalising Harlequins for a Kieran Treadwell high tackle, and the territory Sale gained was the foundation for their lead-taking penalty try that came with the double whammy of a Riley yellow card for maul collapse.
The damage didn’t end there for Quins as a 77th-minute scrum left them reduced to 13 players. With Riley in the bin and Jack Walker having failed a HIA, Treadwell had to exit as punishment for the uncontested scrum.
A further change was also needed before the scrum could happen. Even though the scrum was uncontested, Harlequins had to have three front row players packing down, so prop Will Hobson came back on and midfielder Bryn Bradley exited.
Lightning rod Smith
Included for the first time in 2026/27, Smith at 10 was a lightning rod for everything good about this Harlequins revival. It was one thing for the visitors to be giddily talking about the importance of his selection; quite another for a struggling team to wake up to his infectious enthusiasm.
It needed Smith to make an early statement and his influence was immediate, making a first-minute break that left Joe Marchant on the floor. That signposted how much of a nuisance he would be to the Sale defence with his canny game management in the first-half.
Smith had several handling involvements in Riley’s third-minute opener before scoring on eight and 19 minutes through some intelligent running, and this smartness in picking a line would have secured his hat-trick before the half-hour but for O’Flaherty’s last-ditch intervention.
It was a pity that the second-half was a much more limited affair and Harlequins collectively seemed to shut up shop once they got their bonus-point try 13 minutes into the second-half, as another spark from Smith would surely have settled the result in their favour.
You could also be picky and single out some of Smith’s defending; for example, he seemed to pick the wrong man to monitor for Sale’s second try, honing in on Reed and allowing Warr the room to strike on the next phase.
However, this was a comeback match where the emphasis must linger more on the No.10’s welcome attacking mentality. He was exactly the lift that Harlequins needed after a terrible few weeks without him calling the shots.
Furbank versus ‘dark horse’ Carpenter
Ex-England international Stuart Barnes previewed this match in The Times by suggesting that the Sale full-back, the one-cap Joe Carpenter, was poised to play his way into the England picture ahead of the injury-cursed George Furbank, the visiting Harlequins No.15.
“If the dark horse can string together a series of error-free performances, mixed with the odd flash of magic on the counter from loose kicks, he could bolt all the way to the World Cup,” he reckoned.
His head-to-head evaluation, and his bold prediction about Carpenter’s international status, set things up nicely, but this duel wasn’t a standout feature in a match that did enjoy some first-half frills before enduring a laboured second period.
Furbank must have read the Barnes piece as he was quick to shine, producing a slick left-to-right pass to put in Riley for the third-minute opening try.
That contribution was nice, but what followed five minutes later was an audacious flick-on to Luke Northmore that allowed the midfielder to race clear from just inside the opposition half and set up Smith. It was the high watermark in a performance that faded after the opening 20 minutes.
Carpenter, meanwhile, also fleetingly caught the eye. He produced a neat step and break down the left in the lead-up to his team’s opening try, and he thought he had Reed teed up to score not long after, only for the wing to fumble collecting the pass.
There was also a nice aerial win on 16 minutes and a 59th-minute break around the middle of the pitch with Sale in dire need of any sort of go forward at that juncture. As a head-to-head, though, Furbank versus Carpenter unfortunately didn’t ignite.
Jury out on ‘right man, Gilmore’
New Harlequins boss Jason Gilmore insisted in midweek that he definitely was still the right man for the job despite their horrible start to the new campaign. The concession of 81 points and 13 tries was dreadful stuff for a club that has revamped with a view to immediately upping their standard.
A pulse was found in Salford, but there was an inevitability about the drabness of their play in the closing 25 minutes, and it offered a troubled Sale a lifeline when they should have been well beaten by that stage.
Cunningham-South and Kenningham were among those who had helped Smith take the contest to the hosts when energy levels were high, but there wasn’t enough of an impetus from the bench to see this result out and that has got to be worry from a strength in depth perspective.
Harlequins did leave with two bonus points for their endeavours – their first points of the season – but they remain rooted to the bottom of the table and are already nine points off fourth-place Leicester in the fourth play-off spot.
It suggests they still have a mountain to climb and a ton of work to do to prove that Gilmore is the right man that he claims to be.
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