Saint-Andre's Sale look to sting Wasps

Sale Sharks boss Philippe Saint-Andre has described tomorrow’s Zurich English Premiership title eliminator against champions Wasps as “a bonus” for his team.

Like Wasps, Sharks have already secured Heineken Cup qualification next season, while potential silverware awaits when they tackle French club Pau in the European Challenge Cup final later this month after beating Connacht in the semi-final.

The league crown though, is not beyond a side of such free-scoring prowess, and there is enough firepower in the Sale ranks – notably Jason Robinson, Mark Cueto and Steve Hanley – to produce a Causeway Stadium upset.

“This match is a bonus for us after finishing third in the table,” said Saint-Andre. “My players know it will be a difficult game to play against one of the best sides in the Premiership, but the prize for winning tomorrow will be a trip to Twickenham to play Leicester.”

Lawrence Dallaglio has put Wasps on a full-scale Sharks alert ahead of their third successive Premiership semi-final, but they are determined to once again ease through on the rails in the quest for title glory.

“They (Sale) have threats all over the field,” said Wasps skipper Dallaglio. “They have the ability to rack up points very quickly, as they showed against Harlequins. We will be in for an interesting game.”

Wasps rugby director Warren Gatland, in charge for his final home game before returning to New Zealand, added: “I think we need this game this weekend. There has been an edge to training this week.

“When you get a performance (Leicester) that is not up to scratch, it is often easy to make changes, but you don’t become bad players or a bad team from just one performance.

“It was a bit of a blow-out on the scoreboard last weekend, but if you look at it, it is a couple of things you can easily fix.”

Gloucester, meanwhile, will be without England flanker Andy Hazell for Sunday’s wildcard play-off against Newcastle at Kingsholm.

Newcastle, with a Heineken Cup place on offer for next week’s Twickenham wildcard final winners, will parade all their big-guns, including Jonny Wilkinson, Colin Charvis and Matt Burke.

“We’ve now got quite a settled nucleus to the side, which is an unusual position for us since Christmas because of the massive number of injuries we’ve had,” said Newcastle rugby director Rob Andrew.

“We’ve finally had enough players back to do some quality work in training, and if you look at our last couple of games, you can see the improvement."