Sale had the prize of a playoff place to chase and were at home where they had lost only once this season. If they reckoned it would be a formality, they forgot that London Irish, after their surge to the Heineken Cup semi-final, are a force which cannot be taken lightly. Sale were scratching their heads long before the end about why the game had slipped out of their hands.

Brian Smith, the London Irish coach, said: “We asked the boys to leave nothing on the pitch and they responded. It was the most comprehensive performance against the Sale forwards. You saw heroes out there.”

Sale were unable to register a single point until the last minute. Long before that the Irish had set the tempo with two tries in the first 23 minutes, the first of them by Topsy Ojo, who terrifies opponents whether he has the ball or not and this was another day when the Irish wing looked every inch an England player.

The Irish had gained command with two long distance scores while Sale wasted so many promising positions close in because of a mixture of good defending and making basic errors. There was a serious lack of command by Sale when they created promising positions in the Irish half.

Even more embarrassing for the home side was that with eight minutes to play, they faced an Irish team that had two men in the sin bin for a three minute period - Richard Thorpe was yellow carded after 64 minutes and James Hudson eight minutes later. It was a lifeline. But Sale, as almost everywhere else on the pitch, could not break through and the defiance with which the Irish forwards produced on their own line was bravery indeed.

Ojo’s opening try on 19 minutes came after a pass by Richard Wigglesworth was intercepted, leaving Ojo to run unchecked from his own half. The second Irish try came from Seilala Mapusua after Sailosi Tagicakibau had set up the chance from halfway. Almost immediately Sale had a series of prime positions in the Irish 22, all of them offering the chance to go for the posts. Yet they failed to make a sequence of five-metre scrums count.

So it went on past half-time and into the late stages before the next score, a second try for Mapusua who gained the ball after a collision with Luke McAlister and ran clear from 40 metres. The match was long gone when Chris Bell scored Sale’s lone try with a few seconds left.

Star man: Topsy Ojo(London Irish)

Sale: B Foden; S Kuadey (M Cueto 60min), C Bell, L McAlister, A Vilk; C Hodgson (W Cliff 76min), R Wigglesworth; L Faure (A Sheridan 44min), N Briggs (S Bruno 51min), S Turner, C Jones, B Cockbain (M Hills 58min), J White (capt), J Fernandez, Lobbe, S Chabal (S Cox 44min)
London Irish: P Hewat (T De Vedia 74min);T Ojo, S Mapusua, S Geraghty, S Tagicakibau; E Hickey (W Fury 75min), P Hodgson; T Lea’aetoa (D Murphy 58min), D Paice, F Rautenbach (C Dermody 74min), J Hudson, R Casey (capt) (G Johnson 52min), D Danaher, S Armitage, P Murphy (R Thorpe 52min)

Scorers: Sale: Try: Bell; Con: McAlister
London Irish: Tries: Ojo, Mapusua (2); Con: Hickey; Yellow cards: London Irish: Thorpe 64, Hudson 72
Referee: C White (RFU)
Attendance: 10,252