Sale reveal meeting lined up with some out-of-work Wasps targets

Sale boss Alex Sanderson has revealed he is due to meet with some out-of-work Wasps players on Friday, three days after the clubs were due to clash in a Premiership Rugby Cup game that was cancelled due to the Coventry-based falling into administration and ceasing trading.

Sale versus Wasps was originally scheduled to go ahead on Tuesday night at the Coventry Building Society Arena, but Wasps were suspended last Wednesday by the RFU after they admitted they were likely to go into administration – something that came to pass on Monday when it was confirmed that 167 players and staff had been made redundant.

Just over 24 hours after that desperate development at Wasps, Sale boss Sanderson explained on Tuesday afternoon that he was interested in talking with some of these out-of-work players – he understandably wouldn’t say who – and was told by co-owner Simon Orange not to hesitate in recruiting if there was some wriggle room remaining within the Sharks salary cap or there was a need for an injury dispensation signing.

“We have some interest,” volunteered Sanderson at his media briefing ahead of next Sunday’s home game in Manchester against Harlequins, the 2021 league champions. “We have a little modicum of room so we looking at a couple of lads and I’m meeting a few on Friday…

“There are a lot of good players, a lot of good coaches and a lot of good members of staff who will no doubt because of their quality get themselves jobs and get themselves back into the game. It doesn’t make it any easier in the short term to have that amount of turmoil and unrest.”

Amid an anxious climate where both Wasps and Worcester have gone to the wall within weeks of each other to leave the Premiership reduced from 13 to eleven clubs, there has been speculation that some other clubs are also under severe financial pressures. Sanderson, though, insisted Sale isn’t a business under threat, the director of rugby explaining he is in regular communications with the owners backrolling the Sharks.

“I speak to Simon regularly,” he assured. “I was on the phone last night at half-eight and he stressed the point this morning [Tuesday] if there was room in the cap and we needed players for injury dispensation then we should spend that money on those players. That was reinforcement enough that the resources and the investment is still there on our part.

“The financial world is not in a good place. Like, my brother [ex-England international Pat] works in it and it is all doom and gloom, and a lot of these (rugby club) owners are people who have got money invested in the financial world.

“Most clubs are looking for further investment to add to their security because of the way the world is financially at the moment and it is there in the background, but I have been given every assurance that as a club we are strong and are invested.

“I know for a fact he [Orange] has written the club into his will, which goes to show you how invested they are ’til death and then beyond. We are very lucky in that sense.”

It was over the weekend that Sale were linked with ex-Wallabies international Tevita Kuridrani, who has been unattached since the Top 14 relegation of Biarritz earlier this year, but Sanderson seemed to pour cold water that he could be a short-term signing for the injury Conor Doherty and Luke James.

Referencing how the injury dispensation process works, Sanderson said: “If you get an injury and it is beyond twelve weeks you are able to apply for injury dispensation and that is for a like-for-like player. The salary is in and around what that player was worth but more so the standard of the player has to be comparable, so you can’t lose an academy player and get in a 70-capped Kuridrani.

“It’s an ever-shifting environment. The climate right now is a buyers’ market which is a horrendous expression but it is because there are a lot of players on the market so you just have got to keep having conversations. It’s a never-ending task – recruitment and retention – because all the jigsaws have to fit within that salary cap.”