England's Sale Sharks: Cokayne's hidden injury and representing the north

Rugby World Cup stars have wasted no time returning to Premiership Women’s Rugby, and it’s no different at Sale Sharks, where the likes of England’s trophy winners Amy Cokayne and Morwenna Talling have already featured in the opening rounds of the season.

Cokayne, though, had initially planned to play in just the first three matches before having surgery as she has revealed she has been carrying a thumb injury. She sustained the issue in the opening round of the 2025 Six Nations, meaning the England hooker played with injury that tournament and throughout the winning World Cup run where she started five games including the final against Canada. But now, after a talk with a surgeon, she has decided against surgery.

Cokayne said: “I injured it in the Six Nations against Italy so it’s sitting dislocated but it’s actually fine. It was going to be a post-World Cup job but decided not to have it now and just crack on.

“It’s been fine to be fair, obviously it was quite sore. But I have got good medical staff at England that have put me in some good splints and stuff that got me through it. No complaints now.

“The plan is to just plough on for as long as I can now. If I can play for the rest of my career without having to have it that would be good. I’m not in pain with it anymore so the surgeon said ‘just have it if you’re in pain again’. Hopefully I can get a few years out of it.”

That means Cokayne will be ever-present in her first season for Sale after signing back in May. The move from Leicester Tigers was mainly motivated by support, the 29-year-old said: “For me I wanted to go to a club where I could see the support of the club and that there was room to grow and that they wanted that to happen and to build on something.

“Sale has been that team that you have to turn up against because they will punish you if you don’t. They turned over Exeter last year, they did it against Bristol the year before that. There has always been a good base there, probably just needed a bit of fine tuning. Hopefully with the people that we have recruited we can deliver that and really see the club grow and grow and grow.

“Just the backing of the owners, I would challenge anyone to sit with Michelle [Orange, co-owner] and not be inspired and not think that Sale are going to win the league at some point. Just to feel that support from the owners is definitely huge.”

The team are doing what they can to bond off the pitch to aid results on it, whether through training or social events like a Halloween house party helping to build the camaraderie that Talling says is vital for the season ahead. The 23-year-old has been playing her rugby at Sale since 2023 and believes the club are building something special.

She said: “The group of girls that we have got up here have got a very good culture in terms of we are a team and we are as one. We have all bought into that. We are doing this for the north, we are the only northern team and we need to put our show on and do what we can do.

“The girls who have come in, everyone has bought into that culture and it has only grown the club. I am really looking forward to this season because we have a wealth of new talent and I am excited to see how we grow as a team and keep that belief going.

“We have had good wins in the past but they were one-offs. This season we really need to keep that momentum going. I think last weekend against Loughborough we did play well and unfortunately things didn’t click but that comes with time and playing together more. So hopefully over the next couple of weeks and post-Christmas we get into our groove.”

Sale are not only aiming to keep momentum ticking in terms of wins but also in attendance too. In the opening PWR round they sold-out Morson stadium for the first time. Both England stars want packed stands every week and Talling says added media coverage would only aid that.

“It was massive,” Talling said of the sellout. “Obviously we have tried to grow numbers at the stadium for the past few seasons. To be able to do that in round one and take that momentum off the back of the World Cup was amazing.

“I think more media coverage is great, I think we have seen that already with the BBC picking up some of our games along with TNT. That still has to increase, I think league-wide get more games on the TV so people can watch it.”

Sale will be hoping their game this weekend against Trailfinders is once again a sell-out but no matter how many are in the stands Talling says they cannot wait to “go after them”.

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She added: “They obviously lost against Exeter in the first round so we feel like we have got some positive things to go after there. I think we can really put them under pressure. We have a six day turnaround but really knowing our details and stuff like that will hopefully get us over the line.”

Talling, who made 25 tackles in her first appearance of the season against Loughborough, and Cokayne played alongside each other at a different sold-out game recently in the Rugby World Cup final. At Twickenham 81,885 supporters turned up to watch England lift the trophy for a third time and it was an experience Talling describes as “pretty incredible” and “amazing”.

Cokayne believes the atmosphere that day is one that will never be replicated: “I don’t think you could have even prepared yourself because it wasn’t even just the people that were in the stadium. If you asked anyone it was when we turned up in the bus, it was the whole of the south stand with everyone in the stairwells.

“I don’t think you will ever get that again because it will be very rare that we will have a game that goes on beforehand [bronze medal match] for people to be already in the stadium to do that. I just don’t think you could have prepared yourself for that, it was insane.”