Sanderson knows Clermont pose major threat to
HAVING negotiated several hurdles and been the subject of off-field headlines, Sale travel to European heavyweights Clermont hoping the trip is a worthwhile one.
Other than gaining parity up front, Sharks boss Alex Sanderson has highlighted discipline as an area that his team need to get right if they are going to pull off a result that would possibly surpass anything achieved by the club in Europe before.
Sale pride themselves on their aggressiveness and enthusiasm at the breakdown but sometimes they are guilty of over-competing. “It’s a good debate that we’ve had. I was always in the mind that we don’t talk about the elephant in the room (bad discipline) because everyone then thinks about the elephant in the room,” said Sanderson. “Good discipline is an outcome you want to achieve so you’re better to look at what drives good discipline, and with a lot of our competitive behaviours being ones we want to maintain, I didn’t want to detract from that, and I still really don’t.
“But in not addressing it, we haven’t really fixed it. I haven’t probably approached it in the right way because we haven’t been able to shift the behaviours.
“Some acts of ill-discipline are half-acceptable – you get caught at the bottom of rucks sometimes or you’re two or three inches offside.
“But those unavoidable penalties, if you’re educated in the laws of the game are only selfish acts, they have to be acts of your own desire to want to change the game, because you think you know better.
“It’s better to be more aware of what the right thing to do is for the benefit of the team.”
No-one treads the tightrope more finely than
England superstar Tom Curry. He was penalised three times in last Friday’s loss to Bristol and his average of 2.75 penalties per game is the highest in the Premiership.
“I am not going to criticise Tom because he is one of the world’s best players,” said Sanderson. “But what he would get away with on an international stage he doesn’t get away with in the Premiership because of his levels of intensity. His desire and
physicality to disrupt everything are such that he sticks out like a sore thumb,
“He has mentioned it himself, in terms of decision-making and where and when not to put your head in. He is good enough to allow a situation to open up and complete the opportunity and not go for every opportunity.
“It was a hair’s breadth on Friday (at Bristol), three very fine margins.”
Clermont have fallen from grace somewhat this season and are only ranked mid-table in the Top 14. In the Champions Cup, they have lost four in a row at their once impenetrable Stade Marcel Michelin home.
As European assignments go, however, Sanderson, right, says they don’t come much tougher.
“It’s still pretty scary, they beat Toulouse at home a couple of weeks ago,” he pointed out.
“They have still got a really good team and you under-estimate a team like that, on their home ground, at your peril. You have got to train as if you are playing them at their best. If they have been inconsistent, then so have we. People in glasshouses and all that.” Sanderson has had a hell of a lot thrown at him this week with one of his players being arrested on suspicion of rape and subsequently suspended by the club – not to mention all the comings and goings over Covid red tape.
While not specifying which pressures he’s had to deal with, Sanderson spoke about the resilience you need to survive in the business at the most testing of times.
“These things, and Covid is just one of them, if you let them take chips out of you and eat away at you over time, and I honestly feel you lose parts of yourself if you let it.
“So better to be a sphere say than a square and let certain aspects of the job glance off you rather than take chunks out of you.
“You need to understand the things you had control over and could have done better and those things you had no control over and were out of your influence.”