‘I don’t want to be a cheap fraud’: Alex Sanderson makes promise to Sale fans

Sale’s director of rugby is not satisfied after the club fell short of winning silverware for three seasons in a row

“How we’ve failed in the last few years really, really irks me,” says Alex Sanderson, Sale’s director of rugby, with a note of calm determination. As a matter of fact, he leads the Prem’s most consistent club of recent times: the only side to finish in the top four in the past three seasons. Narrowly denied by Leicester in last season’s semi-final and Bath the year before, Owen Farrell and Saracens had too much in the 2023 final at Twickenham: could this, finally, be the Sharks’ time?

“We just haven’t failed at our best,” Sanderson says of those recent near-misses before the visit of Newcastle Red Bulls. “We’ve left it a little bit too late in the season. I feel like we saw elements of our best in last season’s run-in, but it’s very difficult to maintain.”