Sanderson wants to win the mind games
ALEX Sanderson believes he is making headway into showing his Sale side just how good they are.
And the Sharks boss has brought in a ‘mindset consultant’ to ensure his players can perform to their true potential as they look to secure the Premiership title.
“I feel like I have brought a sense of belief into a team that already knew they had the potential,” said Sanderson, who takes his side to Wasps today.
“That’s my aim, to open these boys’ eyes to how good they actually are.
“One thing I’m trying to establish is a commonality of thought and purpose, who are we as a team?
“What do we want to achieve and how do we go about it together?
“I’m driving more investment to support the players and develop our coaches, we are all on a drive to better ourselves, we’re recruiting to ensure we have the right people in place to drive a high-performance environment.
“For example, Craig White of the British and Irish Lions started with us this week as our ‘mindset consultant,’ he’s come in to help us in the ‘mind gym.’
“He’ll be assisting us in improving our mentality, our mindfulness and our communication, which is a huge thing in the game going forward.
“One of the untapped resources in professional sport is the mental side, so we’re really trying to bring about that change.”
And it already seems to be working, with Sanderson describing last weekend’s win over London Irish ‘the best he’s seen’ since he has been at the club.
“What we saw on Sunday was a more consistent performance and an indication of the path we want to go down in terms of attacking wise,” said the director of rugby, who hands a first start to academy graduate Raffi Quirke, 20, at scrum-half today.
“You see a lot of tries and automatically think what great attack, but in fact two of our tries were scored by defensive turnovers.
“A lot of our tries are formed by setpiece pressure and kicking pressure, so it’s all about capitalising on that with your attack.
“When all those facets of your play seem to interlink and dovetail, that you end up with the big score lines people want to see.
“Last weekend was a complete performance and the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
An unchanged front-row of Bevan
Rodd, Akker van der Merwe and Coenie Oosthuizen will look to provide the platform for Sale again today.
Josh Beaumont remains at lock and captains the side in the absence of Jono Ross.
World Cup winner Lood De Jager is rested this week with Cobus Wiese stepping into the Sharks second row.
Springbok powerhouse Rohan Janse Van Rensburg makes his highly anticipated return to action following his injury and is joined by Sam James in the midfield.