ALEX: WE NEED A FAST START AGAINST “IMPRESSIVE” SARACENS
Alex Sanderson says his team must impose their game on Saracens on Sunday if they want to take anything out of the trip to the StoneX Stadium.
Your Sharks suffered heavy defeats home and away to the North Londoners last season and the Sharks DoR knows his charges have to come out firing to make sure they get a different outcome this time around.
“I thought they were very impressive against Leicester.” Alex said in his pre-match media briefing. “You could see subtle shifts in where they are this season compared to last year and that’s clearly from who’s at the top and how that’s filtering down through lads like Owen Farrell.
“Tomos Williams had a great impact in and around the ruck and they’re going to back to using that physicality on both sides of the ball. They were very efficient getting out of their own half too and closed the game out with 14 men and that shows character.
“So there’s a lot to address and negate but we don’t want to go down there and see what they’ve got because we’ll be on the back foot if we do that.
“We want to impose ourselves on them because you have to down there. We know that only too well from last season.
“We know we need a quick start and we have to go at them all game. They’ll be in front of their own crowd, it’s their first home game of the season and if we let them get their tails up and they start whooping and hollering it’ll be a difficult afternoon.
“Those opening salvos are really important, both strategically and physically.”
Sharks slipped to an opening day defeat on Saturday against Bristol and Alex says he’s been impressed by how quickly his players have turned their attentions to this weekend’s challenge.
“There was a frustration around the performance and the outcome,” he said. “It wasn’t what we wanted, what we trained for or what we hoped for. And it was a performance that felt well within this group.
“But I was impressed with the calmness of the group to process and how rational they were about the fixes going forward. There’s a composure that I have to match.
“It was very quickly re-framed and that’s a good sign.”
Alex also confirmed that Ben Curry and Tom Roebuck were close to returns but prop Bevan Rodd will miss up to three months due to surgery on his scaphoid bone in his hand.
He also said that centre Rekeiti Ma’asi-White will miss this week’s fixture after suffering a knee injury in the Bears game.
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