Alex happy with his cover for Faf
ALEX Sanderson believes Sale have got plenty of cover at scrum-half to cope with the injury to Faf de Klerk.
The South African World Cup winner could be out for up to five months having undergone surgery on a hip flexor injury.
Will Cliff is also out injured for the next few weeks, while the impressive Raffi Quirke will be joining up with the England squad for the Autumn internationals and possibly the Six Nations too.
Gus Warr starts at No.9 for Sale in their Gallagher Premiership game at Leicester today, with Academy youngster Nye Thomas being named as a replacement for the first time.
And having seen the impact Quirke has made, Sanderson has no issues with drafting in Thomas.
“We’ve got decent cover (at scrum-half) when Cliffy comes back. Gus Warr has been looking really good in training too,” he said.
“And we’ve got a young lad called Nye Thomas, he’s 18 years old and he could be another Raffi – with the ball in hand he’s electric and if he gets a bit of space, he’ll surprise a few people.
“I’m not too sure about his game management yet but you only get that from experience.
“Over the Autumn internationals we’ve got two games in the Premiership Cup, so we want to give these lads a chance anyway.
“We’re not looking at any short term solutions at the moment. I’ve got huge faith in the lads we’ve got. It might be blind faith because they’re unproven at the top level. Right now, they need my backing and they’ve got it.”
Having dispatched defending champions Harlequins last time out, Sharks now face a Leicester side who have won five out of five.
“Leicester, statistically speaking, kick the most and have pretty much the highest territory.
“So they can squeeze teams and play territory and that’s the main factor that dictates win/ loss ratio in test match rugby. They’ve got that down to a tee,” said Sanderson, who has made seven changes from last week’s win with Rohan Janse van Rensburg, Marland Yarde and Ben Curry all back in the side.
“So we have to be able to negate that. They’ve got massive players like Genge, Martin, Wiese.
“We have to get parity and field position and disrupt their big ball carriers. If we don’t do all of that. We’ll fall short.”
December marks the one-year anniversary of Sanderson’s arrival at Sale, and he says the extra pressure of being a director of rugby as opposed to a coach drives him on. “The nature of the job is that there are more aspects to get involved in, but I’m loving the job,” he said.
“I’m loving the workload, I’m loving spending time with the lads, and I’m loving having more influence.
“Sometimes my little boy asks me when I’m going to take a day off – he’s probably heard me say it. But we all have to live it. There’s no way around it.”