The Spartans’ second season in league rugby was harder than their first: a new division, a side stretched thin by the spring, and a finish one place lower than the year before.

The First XV

For 2006–07 the club moved from Miller Homes Division 5 South into Division 5 East, with Matt Whiteley captaining the side. It opened well enough. Oldham 3rds came to Sale on 2 September and went home beaten 20–12. Then came five straight defeats, three of them heavy, the last a 7–60 loss at home to Littleborough 3rds, who would take the division that year with twenty-five wins from twenty-six.

Relief came against North Manchester 2nds, the one club below the Spartans in the table. They won 49–27 at North Manchester on 14 October and 61–3 at home on 27 January. The rest of the autumn was a sequence of near misses in among the beatings: 6–8 at Marple 3rds, 15–19 at home to Aldwinians 4ths. The club’s only cup tie of the year, a Halbro Plate preliminary round away at Chorley 2nds at the end of October, went unplayed.

The best of the season was the six weeks after Christmas, and all of it came at Sale. Marple were beaten 8–7 on 6 January, which answered the two-point loss in November, and North Manchester followed on 27 January. Hope Valley 1, who had won 20–14 in September, were beaten 52–12 on 17 February.

What followed went the other way. Heaton Moor 2nds, who finished second, won 71–0 at Sale on 24 February, and Buxton 2nds won 58–0 there on 10 March. Between those two came the only draw of the Spartans’ season, 10–10 away at Rochdale 3rds. Two away league fixtures, at Littleborough in February and at Aldwinians in March, were conceded rather than played. The season ended with three defeats, the closest of them 29–31 at home to Ashton under Lyne 2nds and the last 10–22 at home to Stockport 4ths on 21 April.

The final table read: played twenty-six, won five, drawn one, lost twenty, 346 points scored and 641 conceded, forty league points, thirteenth of fourteen.

Coaching and conditioning

The club’s answer to the gap in standard was to look outside it. Several professional coaches worked with the side at different points in the year. Phil Leck, of the Sale Sharks Academy, ran a monthly session for a period, and his son Chris Leck, a professional at Sale, helped out alongside him. Towards the end of the season David Smyth left the club and Chris Leck became the team’s main coach.

It was around the same time that Elaine Vassie came along to a few training sessions with a friend. She had played a great deal of rugby herself and was working as a fitness instructor, so the Spartans asked whether she would run some sessions to improve the team’s fitness and conditioning. She did.

Cologne and the Hurth Sevens

The second Union Cup was held in Copenhagen at the end of the season and the Spartans had the option of entering it. Most of the club preferred Germany, and they returned to Cologne for the Hurth Rugby Sevens instead. After the season they had had, the lads primarily went to have a good time, an intention that firmed up considerably once they found that the team waiting for them in their group was the British Army, made up of Samoans and Fijians. The Spartans were thrashed, and the Army side went on to win the tournament. The club’s own history records it as possibly the first match between a gay rugby team and one from the military.

The club that year

Brett Dawson chaired the club through the season. Wayne Miles was Player of the Year, Andy Pope was Most Improved, and Karl Bee took the Chair’s Award.

By the spring the side was thin. The same names were turning out week after week, injuries had taken their toll and everyone was tired. The Spartans finished the season clear about what they needed, and what they needed was new players.