Massive week for Sale in Champs Cup quest
NEW EXCLUSIVE COLUMN FROM THE SALE SHARKS STAR ON THE LATEST FROM THE AJ BELL STADIUM
IT’S a massive week for everyone at Sale Sharks. On Saturday we’re flying to Paris to play Racing 92 in the quarter-finals for the Heineken Champions Cup.
It’s basically the rugby equivalent of football’s Champions League so it’s a huge game, in a stadium – La Defense Arena – that I’ve always wanted to play in. But our challenge is to make sure we adapt to our new surroundings and use the atmosphere to put on the kind of performance we know we’re capable of.
This week we’ve had a neuro-psychologist at Carrington and it’s all been about positive and negative imagery. We looked at clips of what we can expect at the stadium and the more that we can understand about that experience, the more second nature it might be. For me, I don’t want to take all of the emotion out of it though. I enjoy the big occasions because it’s why I play rugby, and I want to harness that emotion and that excitement and put it into my performance.
It’s a slightly child-like approach but I don’t want to overthink it. I know how lucky we are to be able to play in a quarter-final of the Champions Cup so it’s important that we enjoy the game and relish the pressure that comes with the occasion. At this stage in last season’s Champions Cup we travelled to France to play La Rochelle but for me, I won’t be looking back at that game for lessons. To be very honest I haven’t thought about it because they’re very different teams. It’s the same stage of the competition but we’re a different team and Racing 92 are very different to La Rochelle. French teams are different to play against but like teams in our Premiership, they are all different. This Racing team is all about speed and in fact, their ruck speed is considerably faster than the fastest in our league. So we know the game will be quick, but they’ve got some big players too, so it’ll be physically demanding. They have some big talent in their backs and their ruck speed can lead to a looser game. Our challenge is how can we adapt to the game and how we slow them down by the timing of the tackle and for me in my position, how we approach the breakdown.
We’re looking forward to the challenge but at the same time, we know
I enjoy the big occasions because it’s why I play rugby, I want to harness that emotion Ben Curry
that we have some big players in our dressing room who are capable of performing at the very highest level.
There’s always a fine balance between understanding the threats that an opposition team poses and making sure that we focus on being the very best that we can be and while we understand what a threat guys like Finn Russell pose, we know we can hurt them if we perform as well as we can.
A European game is a nice break from the week-in-week-out nature of the Premiership.
There’s been so much focus on whether we make the top four all season and I think we’re at the stage of the season where honestly, we’re not thinking about it. It’s not in our hands any more and to a degree, the pressure is off, so we are just focusing on winning our games and then we’ll see what happens.
There’s no point overthinking it. Let’s just play and see what happens.
This season was always likely to be a transitional season but everyone here knows that we’re moving in the right direction.
We’ve got exciting players joining us in the summer and I know work is going on off the pitch too, to buy the stadium.
Results will come and we all have faith in what we’re building.