Yarde puts on brave face after damaged knee takes gloss off Sale’s triumph
Marland Yarde still attempted to be positive after suffering a serious knee injury in Sale’s hard-earned win on Saturday.
The England wing, 26, took to social media to reassure supporters that he remained upbeat, despite dislocating his left knee five minutes from time.
Yarde, who was injured when slipping in a tackle, tweeted from a Manchester hospital: “Obviously devastated with what’s happened and dislocating my knee but will stay positive until I know the full extent of what I have damaged.”
The wing, who won the last of his 13 England caps on the summer tour to Argentina in 2017, joined Sale from Harlequins this time last year in an attempt to relaunch his career.
He has played in all Sale’s games this season and his bustling break changed the course of this match after he caught Micky Young’s box kick.
The move almost brought a try for scrum-half Will Cliff and gave Sale a firm grip to overhaul Newcastle’s 7-3 half-time lead.
Sale’s forwards finished in command against a Newcastle team who were also hit by injuries, and two second-half yellow cards for prop Logovi’i Mulipola and Young, the scrum-half.
Both were sent to the sin-bin as Sale raised the tempo, bringing tries by locks James Phillips and Bryn Evans, plus one from centre Rohan Janse van Rensburg.
Steve Diamond, Sale’s director of rugby, attributed the strong finish to the arrival of Dorian West as forwards coach. Diamond hopes the recruitment of the former England hooker, whose 10-year coaching stint at Northampton ended last season, will help to attract top internationals.
“Dorian knows his stuff,” Diamond said. “He’s detailed and he’s been around quite a long time. The forwards listen to that. He’s taken over and he’s going to build a good forwards pack.
“When you bring good players to the club they ask questions, and I didn’t think the lads who were looking after the forwards could answer it in the way I wanted it answering. Dorian does that. He’s got a lot of experience.”
Diamond hopes that Sale’s win, which lifted them off the bottom of the Premiership, will be a timely boost for a squad facing a trip to Perpignan on Friday, for the open-
ing game of the European Challenge Cup.
Sale have good cover for Yarde in the return to fitness of Wallaby back James O’connor, while Chris Ashton will complete his sevenweek ban, imposed following his dismissal in a pre-season match against Castres, for the second European game, at home to Connacht on Oct 20.
Newcastle are also preparing for a trip to France to play Toulon in the European Champions Cup on Sunday. This defeat means they go into the campaign bottom of the Premiership, having only won once in six games. Newcastle’s record is a little distorted because they have faced the top three teams from last season in Saracens, Exeter and Wasps. However, Newcastle finished this match looking forlorn and they will need an injury bulletin this week after Vereniki Goneva (head), Toby Flood (shoulder) and Will Welch (leg) all had to be substituted.
“We’re not happy with our performance, clearly, and especially so from 30 minutes onwards,” said Dean Richards, the director of rugby. “There’s a certain amount of mitigation there with suffering so many key injuries and then a pair of yellow cards, but we just need to learn what we can from it and draw a line because we have a huge fortnight to come now in the Champions Cup. ”