Ewan Richards picked off a Sale attacking line-out and, from his own 22, Tuipulotu pummelled his way down the short side, running through two tackles, before spotting space in the Sale back field and setting up replacement scrum-half Van der Linde perfectly with his piece of footballing magic.
Then came Barbeary’s killer thrust, after 28 punishing phases, to put them within sight of the finishing line. While Sale engineered a great position to steal the win late on, George Ford – playing his first game since February 21 after being dropped by England following the Six Nations defeat to Ireland – lost control of the ball and the chance slipped away.
It was Sharks’ ninth defeat of a disappointing league campaign.
“I’m crestfallen,” said Sale’s director of rugby Alex Sanderson, who was forced to play a hooker, Nathan Jibulu, at No 7 because of his back-row injury issues.
“I’m just gutted for the amount of effort that the lads put in. It is frustrating but it’s seemingly a similar story to how the rest of the season has gone.
“They’re a good team, with a strong bench and a minimal-risk game plan. You know where they are coming from but you’ve still got to be very, very, very good to stop them.”
Sale, in their current incarnation, are a long way from that. Their season now hinges on a round-of-16 Champions Cup tie at Harlequins next weekend. Bath have a home tie against Saracens and the A-listers will be back for that one.
Match details
Scoring sequence: 0-5 Frost try, 0-7 Carreras con, 5-7 O’Flaherty try, 7-7 Ford con, 12-7 du Preez try, 14-7 Ford con, 19-7 Cowan-Dickie try, 19-12 Hennessey try, 19-14 Carreras con, 19-19 Staddon try, 24-19 Roebuck try, 26-19 Ford con, 26-24, Tuipulotu try, 26-26 Carreras con, 26-31 Barbeary try.
Sale Sharks: J Carpenter; T Roebuck, R du Preez (M Louw 48), R Ma’asi-White, T O’Flaherty; G Ford, R Quirke (G Warr 60); B Rodd (R McEachran 60), L Cowan-Dickie (E Caine 60), J Harper (T Raymont 60), E van Rhyn, B Bamber, S Dugdale (D du Preez 57), N Jibulu (J Gilmore 72), J Vermeulen.
Bath: T de Glanville; J Cokanasiga, L Hennessey, C Redpath, W Muir; S Carreras, T Carr-Smith (B van der Linde 60); S Kirk (B Obano 35), D Frost (K Tuipulotu 41), V Sela (T du Toit 35), W Jeanes (E Richards 53), R Molony (C Ewels 54-72), T Hill, E Staddon, M Reid (A Barbeary 60).
Sin-bin: Cokanasiga, Frost.
Referee: L Pearce.