Butler frustrated by home cup loss
The visitors were 29-21 victors, with Butler having joined James Ponton in taking charge of the side.
“Disappointing is probably a fair word to sum it up, and frustration would be in there as well,” he said, with Marcus Tiffen and Elliott Obatoyinbo scoring the Falcons’ tries.
“We felt like at times we executed what we wanted to do, we played the way we’d talked about but we just couldn’t be consistent enough with it for long enough.
“We gave them some easy points when we were having to work hard for the points we got ourselves.
“We came out of the traps really well, we were happy with how we went for the majority of the first half and we had a good talk at half-time.
“A couple of things just didn’t go our way – simple errors, and it paid dividends for Sale on the scoreboard. All of a sudden we were fighting a bit of an uphill battle.”
Obatoyinbo was one player to catch the eye with a fine solo try, Butler saying: “Elliott scored a fantastic try and I thought he had some great moments in the game.
“He really commanded that high ball, he showed some excellent footwork and it was a brilliant finish for the try that he scored.”
Resisting the urge to criticise the officials for their handling of the second-half incident which saw Iwan Stephens felled by a high tackle as he broke away down the right wing, Butler added: “Sale were down a man at that stage, we had two opportunities to score from the line-outs and we didn’t manage it, so we’ll just focus on ourselves rather than the referee.
“It is what it is in terms of the tackle on Iwan, but the important part is we weren’t able to make it count.
“I can’t really fault the effort of the players, though. They gave it absolutely everything, and it just felt like we couldn’t catch a break towards the end there.
“It’s frustrating because we felt we could get ourselves over the line if the opportunity came, but it was just little things throughout the game where we weren’t quite consistent enough with our execution to come away with the win.”
The Falcons are next in action on Friday night when they host Gallagher Premiership leaders Bristol Bears.
[**Click here**][1] to buy tickets for the 7.45pm kick-off.
[1]: https://www.eticketing.co.uk/newcastle-falcons/EDP/Event/Index/1744
