Sale Director of Rugby Alex Sanderson spoke on a wide variety of topics in his media session on Tuesday 31st May, including his reflections of the season, Faf and Lood’s last game for the club, his excitement for George Ford’s arrival and more. Here are the best of his quotes from the presser:
ANALYSIS OF THE SEASON
“I think we will look back and look back at the second half of the season if we were to finish 5th and put a good performance in from where we were 10th, we have some performances there which we are proud of. It’s probably not where we would have hoped to have ended up last summer but better than we would have envisaged potentially around Christmas time.
“I am well aware that it takes a bit of time to reflect on the season. You swing from what could have been and those opportunities missed like the Covid game at Christmas against Newcastle. That’s not to say we would have won that game but I would have backed us to win it and now we are in a different position for the semi-finals so these are real sliding doors opportunities.”
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES OF THE SEASON
“Part of that learning is how the squad has changed and is going to change. They have learnt more about themselves, what they want during the course of this season. It has been a strange one (season) with the Lions games right at the start and that extended period of a large bulk of our squad not being available for selection at the start of the season. You always learn more from adversity, through failure than you do ticking along and winning.”
A CHANGE IN DYNAMIC NEXT SEASON
“It will be different, we will miss those contributing factors that those inspirational leaders give us certainly but those voids in personality and leadership have to be filled otherwise you have failed. So I am waiting with baited breath but also quite excited about who and how we fill those spaces and move on as an organisation as a club with a slightly different outlook. Going into next season, we have replaced some of those key players with English Qualified Players so we are much more of an Northern English feel to us, more homegrown talent coming through and that for me if we are able to grow a squad and keep the standards that were here when you had World Cup winners with you then that would be a success, that is the exciting thing going forward is what we are building as well.”
LOYALTY IN THE GAME
“There is a legal debate here as you own the registration for a player and by rights they are legally bound to you for a period of time and then there is the ethical connotations. I don’t know what amount of legal binding is going to encourage loyalty, certainly to a cause and a game that we are involved win. If a player doesn’t want to part of a place despite them getting paid at the end of the week and at the end of the month their contribution is going to be sub-par and not at the level when you signed them at the beginning of their contracts. Contracts have to exist for the security of the player.”
EVOLUTION OF THE SIDE NEXT SEASON
“Like always you have to lean into your strengths and the strength is we are going to have a very fit, strong, powerful, young pack that will hopefully be with us for the next 6, 7, 8 years. A pack that is able to dominate collisions and certainly compete and dominate in the set-piece at the highest level in Europe, that is rare. Actually being able to physically match the bigger teams in Europe which we did against Racing from a pack perspective. It is what we do on the back of that is where we need to make some improvements so shifting the needle slightly from a defense and game management point of view to one of defense into attack. With that quick ball and dominance to really sharp, quick decision-makers at 9 and 10 I would like to think we would be able to capitalise and convert more on some of that dominance than we have this year.”
ENJOYING THE FINAL GAME OF THE SEASON
“That’s my forever aim to take the pressure off them, for them to enjoy themselves. That is always a directive of the week for me because there is enough pressure on them generally speaking, naturally there is less pressure but certainly they will want to go out on a good performance and want to go out remembering how they finished the season. That is human nature as well. Some of these lads are moving on, they can hold on to this last memory for years and the rest of them will hold onto it for at least a pre-season so it is important that you want to finish on a positive note. That does not mean to say that we are going to make it into a circus because we wouldn’t play our best rugby by making it a circus so we have talked about that this week, what kind of animal do we want to be, what kind of Shark do we want to be this weekend because it is truly up to them now. There is certainly no consequence of the back of this. Having said that they have trained with a smile on their face.”
DEALINGS WITH FAF AND LOOD
“A lot of what you see with Faf is what you get; the energy, the hair, the unpredictability, it is all there on display. That is not all of him, there are hidden depths to Faf which you see through his competitiveness and physicality. That flamboyance that you see never transfers into arrogance or complacency. He is a very humble person and I have a lot of time for him. He’s not all fluff, there’s a good amount of ferocity which I respect and admire. Much of what you see is what you get with Lood. His character that you would assume to be aligned with the size of the man, he is a leader of men and he is honest and he is a family man and he plays like that, he plays with his heart on his sleeve at the front and in the trenches.
“I get on with them very well, you would think two people who are leaving the club within the original contractual times that they said they would commit to that they could be leaving on bad terms but because of the people they are they are leaving with our blessing because I know why they are leaving and I can’t disagree with their motives for doing so. Two of our talisman over the course of this season without which we wouldn’t have got to two quarter-finals and a semi-final who are sadly leaving before their time with us but they are leaving with all our best wishes so it is bittersweet.”
EXCITEMENT FOR GEORGE FORD’S ARRIVAL
“He is so sharp isn’t he still and has a big influence on everywhere he goes whether it be Bath or Leicester now. I think his decision making of when to do the right thing at the right time like most people do through experience has improved. So there is going to be a really important period of time when he does come in to make sure we are aligned, how aligned we are with George and how him and Paul Deacon (attack and skills coach) are going to work moving forward will be an instrumental part of the first 4-6 weeks of pre-season.”
PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN RAFFI AND GEORGE
“Can you imagine? You have got a threat around the rucks there and then you have got a threat 10 metres outside who is able to unleash those backs and put it on a sixpence so that is super exciting. AJ has done a great job for us this year, he has been injured through a lot of it as has Raffi so part of it is keeping them on the field.”
SIDE NOTES
Recruitment meeting coming up on Thursday, a little bit of money in the cap now through various reasons, potential new players have got to better than the current crop, not wanting to block the pathway for the young players
Coaches going to Australia to visit the likes of Melbourne Storm, Richmond AFL in June
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