Sale suffered their second loss of the Aviva Premiership season at The Stoop on Friday, leaving question marks over the Manchester side’s ability to win away from home.
Sharks, who have only won one game away from the AJ Bell since last November, will next play Newport Gwent Dragons at the Rodney Parade in their first clash of the European Challenge Cup.
The match against Harlequins was nearly won by the boot of Danny Cipriani in the closing stages, but chances for a penalty and a drop goal went begging as the inclement weather got the better of the fly-half after a commanding performance for his side.
Man of the match TJ Ioane said that his team can take positives from the game.
“I think we are producing a lot of good rugby at the moment, and hopefully we can continue that and build on it heading into next week’s European game against Newport Gwent Dragons.
“We just need to work on the things which didn’t go too well for us, and carry on with what did go well.”
Teammate Tommy Taylor said that his side are reaching their targets for the season so far.
“At our pre-season camp in Portugal, we said we would be looking for ten points after the first batch of Premiership games and we’ve got them, so we can be pleased with that.”
With his side sitting fifth in the Premiership table after four games, the hooker recognised the Sharks’ had struggled at the break down and said he was happy to take the bonus point from the Quins clash.
“It does hurt quite a lot, we feel like we should have won the game, and it would have been good heading into Europe sitting pretty in the table,” he said.
“We’ll assess what happened at The Stoop and go into the Challenge Cup and see a number of lads given a chance for a run out.”
Taylor added that he was excited by the prospect over playing the Dragons and Pau over the next few weeks in the European Rugby Challenge Cup.
“I’ve never played those two sides, so it’s always exciting to play different teams from different countries, and it’ll be interesting to see how we get on.”
Great work from the lads! Showed a lot of character. Gutted to have not nailed the kick! We showed a lot of resilience tonight #proud
— DannyCipriani (@DannyCipriani87) November 6, 2015
@DannyCipriani87 well played to you and your boys. Could of gone either way.
— Mike Brown (@mikebrown_15) November 6, 2015
Great performance from @SaleSharksRugby last night. May have lost but were playing really good rugby #salesharks #rugby
— andy robertson (@arobertson100) November 7, 2015
Image courtesy of Sale Sharks via YouTube, with thanks.
