Victorious Falcons earn flight to Europe

Near-death experiences are not exactly commonplace at Twickenham - the vast majority of England supporters may have spent the 1970s wondering whether life was worth living, but precious few reached for the revolver - so Pete Anglesea, the Sale captain, broke new ground as he sought to describe the misery of cup final defeat.

"This is like losing a member of your family, without anyone actually dying," said the big loose forward from Bolton. "To be honest with you, I just want to bawl my eyes out." The poor poppet seemed to be stretching the point just a little. This particular trophy could indeed pass for a funeral urn, and by reducing English rugby's premier knock-out competition to the status of a twitching corpse - Heineken Cup first, Zurich Premiership second, Powergen Cup nowhere - the custodians of the professional club game might as well have placed it in a coffin of solid oak and nailed down the lid.

But Anglesea had just participated in the most enthralling final since an all-but-unbeatable Bath vintage prevailed over an unusually motivated and unfeasibly brave Harlequins side in 1992. There are worse ways of spending an afternoon, and there are many worse tournaments in British sport.

Actually, it was possible to sympathise with the Sale contingent. Not because they deserved to win - they under-performed, and admitted as much afterwards - but because they could scarcely have expected their opponents to accumulate four tries and still take the spoils. Newcastle are a most peculiar lot; the more points they rattle up, the more likely they are to lose. This season alone, they have blown 10 Premiership games in which they scored 20 points or more. Once the Geordies moved into 30-point territory, Anglesea must have thought he had them bang to rights.

Yet on this occasion, Newcastle scored their tries at the optimum moments - early in the game, immediately after the interval, midway through the second half when Sale were threatening to establish a winning lead and, crucially, in the final scramble. "I always thought it would be a see-saw match with plenty of tries, and that the winners would be the team that struck last," said Jim Mallinder, the Sale coach. The man is Nostradamus incarnate.

For much of the game, tackling appeared optional. Sale's fringe defence should have denied Warren Britz his opening try - they had a month of Sundays in which to get themselves organised, but remained resolutely unsorted. Hugh Vyvyvan scored his side's second because tackling of powder-puff force allowed Jamie Noon, a major contributor to Newcastle's victory, to tiptoe many a mile through the tulips deep in Sale territory. By the same yardstick, Chris Mayor will never find a first-phase defence more accommodating than the Falcons'. His try at the end of the third quarter bordered on the criminal.

But there were so many wondrous things to see - and, in respect of Tony Spreadbury's music-hall style of refereeing, to hear - that a prolonged bleat about defensive lapses would be akin to moaning about the state of Van Gogh's picture frames. The lead changed hands on six occasions, the close-quarter battle had an Old Testament intensity about it and the goal-kicking of Charlie Hodgson amid the Twickenham swirl was something to behold. This was a final of vivid colour and sharp movement, played at the speed of sound. And thanks to Spreadbury, there was more than enough sound to go round.

When players grizzled about offside or appealed for a forward pass, he laughed in their faces and advised them to "shut up" in the cadence-rich tones of a genial village schoolmaster from the Somerset levels. When a couple of miscreants attempted to explain away their sins after a brief bout of handbagging, he informed them that this was "not a debating chamber". And when Matt Cairns, Sale's replacement hooker, attempted to raise a point of order within seconds of taking the field, Spreadbury slapped him down by saying: "Welcome to the game, son."

There is an old adage about good referees being invisible. No one in his right mind would accuse Spreadbury of invisibility; in the heat of battle, he is about as inconspicuous as an elephant in a conservatory. But rugby has changed out of all recognition in the last 15 years or so, not least in the riot of chatter at scrum, line-out and breakdown. A majority of players now multi-task by offering the official a running commentary on the match in which they are participating, and referees who attempt to whistle them into silence often hyperventilate before half-time. Spreadbury prefers to beat the blabbermouths at their own game, and does it brilliantly.

Hodgson did some brilliant things, too. Sale may have finished second in the scrap for possession and territory - once Newcastle tightened up their scrummaging by introducing Marius Hurter off the bench after half-an-hour, they edged all the important contests - but the cleverest footballing outside-half in England performed a loaves-and-fishes act for his side. In fact, Sale might easily have scored three more tries. Steve Hanley was denied twice by unfortunate bounces; Jason Robinson would certainly have made it to the left corner had Jos Baxendell played it through the hands instead of throwing a cut-out pass. When Hodgson was given bullets to fire, he looked seriously dangerous.

Under the circumstances, it was more than a little cruel that he should have been responsible for Newcastle's winning try in the 76th minute. Hodgson had just kicked a gem of a penalty to give his side a three-point advantage at 33-30 when Nick Walshe, his scrum-half, took the ball into a ruck from the restart. Mark Cueto came off his wing to perform the clearance duties, and his pass, marginally slower than Walshe's specialist variety, gave the rampant Vyvyan the chance of a charge-down on the No 10. This he duly completed, and from the ensuing five-metre scrum, Phil Dowson pumped his way to the Sale line with half the Falcons' pack behind him.

So there you have it. Newcastle have qualified for next season's Heineken Cup; Sale must fight their way through the end-of-term wildcard tournament to achieve the same end. "It will be extremely difficult," acknowledged Mallinder. Judging by the deflated spirits around him, they do not have a cat's hope in hell.

Newcastle: Tries Britz, Vyvyan, Shaw, Dowson; Conversions Walder 4; Penalties Walder 3. Sale: Tries Hanley, Cueto, Mayor; Conversions Hodgson 3; Penalties Hodgson 4.

Newcastle: J Shaw (D Lilley 58); T May, J Noon, M Mayerhofler, M Stephenson; D Walder, J Grindal (H Charlton 47); I Peel (M Hurter 30), N Makin (M Thompson 55), M Ward (Peel 53), G Archer (C Hamilton 64), S Grimes, J Dunbar, W Britz (P Dowson 64), H Vyvyan (capt).

Sale: J Robinson; M Cueto, J Baxendell, C Mayor, S Hanley; C Hodgson, N Walshe; A Sheridan, A Titterrell (M Cairns 62), B Stewart (S Turner 62), I Fullarton, J White, P Anglesea (capt, H Perrett 57), A Sanderson, C Jones.

Referee: A Spreadbury (Somerset).