Sale has sparkle for Steve
Sale 22 Northampton 10
STEVE DIAMOND hailed his side’s performance after they defeated Northampton to move up to fourth place in the Gallagher Premiership standings.
Chris Ashton, Rohan
Janse van Rensburg and Akker van der Merwe all touched down, while Rob du Preez added seven points from the tee.
The result took Sale into the play-off positions and left them just four points behind Exeter, who went ahead of the Saints to the top of the table.
Diamond said: “Against a side that have been playing well all season and have scored more tries than anybody, I think we managed to look after them in defence quite well.
“We know they’re good in the first two or three phases, they scored that try where we missed a one-onone tackle but, apart from that, I thought we handled them quite well.” Despite a frustrating start to the campaign this was a much improved effort and Diamond believes that they have the quality to compete at the right end of the Premiership.
“We’re touching the topfour today and top-four at Christmas was always a little bit of a target.
“We go to Bath next week and who knows where we can be in the next fortnight.”
Sale are now just three points behind Northampton and the Saints’ boss Chris Boyd bemoaned his team’s inaccuracy.
“We got out-scrapped,” Boyd said. “We were trying to box our way out of trouble and they were fighting their way out of trouble.
“Credit to them, they were allowed to slow our ball down, which had an impact on their line speed, which had an impact on our skills, which had an impact on our decision-making.”