Sale Sharks director Alex Sanderson hails 'grit' in opening Gallagher Premiership Rugby victory over Northampton Saints

Northampton Saints made Sale Sharks do plenty of dirty work in their opening day Gallagher Premiership Rugby victory at Salford's AJ Bell Stadium, something that delighted both director of rugby Alex Sanderson and fly-half Robert du Preez.

Saints got off to the perfect start in the opening minutes of the match against last season's runners-up, scoring in the corner courtesy of Tommy Freeman, but were overhauled by lovely, fluent Sale rugby.

In the end, the Sharks held on for a narrow 20-15 win. At full-time, Sale's Sanderson spoke of his delight at a performance that he deemed typically "Northern".

He said: "That was brutally stressful. It's going to be a long season if they all end up like that."

Continuing, Sanderson explained why the performance had impressed him.

"You're just got to win every collision. You know, all the qualities you want to see at the start of the season. The one thing you want to see, hold on to, the one thing you want to see is that ticker. Backs to the wall. Nose to the grindstone, Northern grit."

Sanderson pointed to cohesion in the forward pack as a partial explanation for the strong start to the campaign.

He also explained that the team had been working on more creativity in attack and was pleased with a conversion rate of 80% in the first half.

After the match, Rob du Preez was handed the player of the match award, and immediately agreed that the victory had been a tough one.

He said: "Ha, ha, stressful to say the least. I think the way we started that, a little bit quiet, Saints came out of the blocks firing. The way we dealt with that, the response in the whole game was pretty brilliant."

In the dying minutes of the game, with Sale defending a narrow lead, they were forced to defend their line for a long spell.

Du Preez continued: "You look at that last 10 minutes or five minutes on our line, however long it was, just the resilience to get out of there is outstanding, to a man."

Sale failed to exploit their chances in the second half, failing to add to their half-time score. For Du Preez, this was another lesson for his team to learn, but he also echoed Sanderson's statement that the first half had seen some quality attacking play.

He said: "In the second half, we just didn't come away with points when we were down there. I think that's the big learning, just being a bit more patient down there."

During the week, Sanderson had predicted Sale's status as the second best team in the Premiership last season would leave something of a target on their backs, arguing that for Sale the "goalposts have shifted".

Before the match, TNT pundit Tom May warned his former team Northampton that they cannot rely on their attacking prowess overcoming even the most defensively resolute sides.

May said: "Northampton, [scored] 84 tries last year, but you can’t be like Kevin Keegan's entertainers. You can’t just say ‘We’ll score more than you’ because we know in this league, that’s not going to get you anywhere."

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