Alex Sanderson: 'There’s clearly something missing' at Sale

Newcastle interim coach Stephen Jones praised the “mentality and bravery” of his team as they staged a remarkable second-half comeback to beat Sale 45-42 at Kingston Park.

The visitors had led 35-10 at half-time, with Tom Roebuck, Seb Kelly, Tom O’Flaherty, Joe Carpenter and Alfie Longstaff all crossing, while Tom Christie and Amanaki Mafi scored for Newcastle.

However, the hosts took control after the break as Alex Hearle and Freddie Lockwood went over, and although Arron Reed grounded for Sale, further efforts from Christie and Hearle closed the gap.

Hearle then completed his treble in the dying seconds to seal Newcastle’s second Gallagher Prem win of the campaign, with Jones hailing a “deserved” triumph.

He said: “In fairness to the players, we have an honest debrief. A couple of key areas, defensively we’ve given them too much time on the ball and we addressed that in the second half.

“Credit to the group to be brave, stay in the fight, keep the ball movement high, we carried with purpose in that second half and we looked good on the back of it.

Speaking about the final moments, Jones said: “The mentality and bravery of the boys to be able to ask the question and keep the ball movement high, seven or eight metres from our tryline, I loved the intent and we got a reward off the back of it.

“The group deserve it, management, the fans, everybody associated with the club deserves that victory.”

Hearle completed both his hat-trick and the win in style with a stunning break down the centre of the pitch before diving between the posts.

“Delighted with so many of the guys efforts,” Jones added.

“Great Hearle had that moment at the end, a special moment for him, he’s been fantastic for us all season.

“Big shifts across the board, won’t start naming now otherwise I’ll go from one to 23.

“To do it in the style and back ourselves when the scoreboard was against us, we had a long way to go but we still backed ourselves and that’s so important for us as a group.”

Sale director of rugby, Alex Sanderson, expressed his frustration after his side fell to a 13th defeat of the campaign and stay seventh in the Prem.

Their attention now turns to their final game of the season against Bristol next Saturday.

Sanderson said: “The game in a snapshot started off with some real ambition, real endeavour, some really crisp handling, some good tries, and ended the game with inaccuracy, ill-discipline, some poor defence.

“And that has been a similar rhetoric for eight, nine, most of the season I would say, so it’s no fluke.

“There’s clearly something missing and despite repeated efforts to fix the problem, we have one more week to put it right and chase a good feeling rather than how we all feel right now.”