Saracens will not exactly have made any new friends — and, despite their ever more intimate flirtations with Wembley, numbers in the stands remain an issue — but they ensured top spot for Christmas with this ruthless win in the drizzle. Six points is the size of their lead over the rest, which is a bigger one than they usually enjoy on the field.
Brendan Venter, their director of rugby, talks about building his side from the foundations up, which means they will perfect the nitty-gritty basics before they move on to anything that might be called ambitious. It is clearly of some joy to him that his side can be so far clear before they have moved on from phase one. Indeed, it looks increasingly as if phase one is what they are going to stick with for now.
"We're definitely good enough [to win the title]," said Venter. "That's not an issue. But it's just so far away, it's actually scary. We have a saying in the team: 'Today is a good day.' Tomorrow? I don't know what tomorrow will bring. We genuinely don't even remotely look there."
These are not words to herald the start of phase two. Not that Saracens are as dour as popular opinion would have it. They have some richly gifted (and English) youngsters, but this was not the night to showcase them. Indeed, Alex Goode and Andy Saull, two of the brightest, both withdrew early, the former before the first quarter was out. He had just dropped a try-scoring pass which might have had the game sewn up rather earlier than it was.
The endless rain and the excellence of Saracens' lineout did for any hopes of a more free-flowing encounter. As a spectacle it could have been a lot worse, but Sale were the more ambitious side, and they had about half as much of the ball.
Still, it was enough for Charlie Hodgson to show that he remains England's most gifted fly-half. Venter wondered how, from scrambled ball in the pouring rain, he was able to land a 60-yard kick on a dime for Ben Cohen to gather and launch an assault on the Saracens line in the final 10 minutes. It was from a pinpoint cross-kick to Cohen's wing in the first half that Sale managed what so few others have this season — to cross Saracens' line. Sisa Koyamaibole, a beast of a No8, finished it off to earn the lead at half-time.
"I just think Charlie's a wonderful rugby player," said Venter, before pointing out that his own No10, Derick Hougaard, had won his side the game. Kingsley Jones, Sale's director of rugby, conceded that England had closed the book on Hodgson – the management have not discussed the player with him since the ill-fated 2008 tour of New Zealand.
Jones could not believe that Saracens' best playmaker, Glen Jackson, was not injured but was simply being "rested on rotation". For the time being, Hougaard has the gig at No10 for the pacesetters. It is not exactly the pace of a rip-roaring roller coaster, but it is enough to have the others struggling to keep up.
Saracens Goode (Penney, 18); Cato, Ratuvou, Powell, Wyles; Hougaard, Rauluni; Gill, Brits (Reynecke, 51), Nieto (Skuse, 51), Borthwick (capt), Smith (Vyvyan, 51), Van Heerden, Saull (Barrell, 52), Joubert.
Pens Hougaard 5.
Sale Macleod; Vakacegu, M Tait, Bishop, Cohen; Hodgson, Wigglesworth, Roberts, Briggs, Forster (Halsall, 71), Schofield (capt; Gaskell, 31), Cox, Fearns, Seymour, Koyamaibole.
Try Koyamaibole Con Hodgson Pens Hodgson 2.
Referee D Pearson (Northumberland) Attendance 7,101.
