Suddenly Sale don’t shine so Diamond bright

FAF DE KLERK, Lood de Jager, Jono Ross, Coenie Oosthuizen, Akker van der Merwe, the Du Preez boys in triplicate… Frankly, the Curry brothers, Tom and Ben, might as well change their family name to Currie and claim the republic’s principal domestic tournament as part of their heritage. As Sale were already operating as an offshore province of South Africa, did they really need the centre Janse van Rensburg as well? His two-timing antics on the contract front landed both player and club in the disciplinary dock. It was not an edifying episode. For so much of their modern history, Sale have been a club worthy of love and respect: never the richest, but always tough and energetic and highly productive for England when needed. On the withdrawalhit “tour of hell” in 1998, for instance, when only Gloucester had more players in the squad; or on the injury-blighted trip to South Africa in 2007, when the likes of Andy Titterrell, Stuart Turner, Dean Schofield, Chris Jones and Magnus Lund joined Jason Robinson in fighting fires in the Springbok badlands. Even when they won the Premiership in 2005 with such prime imports as Sebastien Chabal, Ignacio Fernandez Lobbe and Jason White among their number, their boss, Philippe SaintAndre, was able to say: “Yeah. And we also put a dozen Englishqualified players on the field. No one talks about them.” This seems different, sadly. The club that gave us Steve Diamond seems less like Sale than ever before, thanks to the recruitment policy of…Steve Diamond.