Wasps win massive – Pearce

Sale Sharks’ Laurence Pearce said that his side’s 17-13 win over Wasps was a “massive result” for the club’s younger players.

The Sharks hosted Wasps in this season’s opening Anglo-Welsh Cup encounter, with tries from centres Mark Jennings and Sam Bedlow sealing the win.

“It’s a massive result for some of these young boys, because they went to Wasps in the A League and got a bit of a beating so we knew we needed to put in a big performance,” said the 25-year-old.

“It was a massive performance from everyone, especially the older players who haven’t had the chance yet this season. It shows that they’re ready to come on when they’re needed in the Premiership.”

Pearce made his first appearance since featuring against Gloucester on 16 September, and said it felt great to be back out on the pitch.

“It’s especially great to be back at the AJ Bell, the boys were great and so were the fans,” he said.

“We showed great composure all week, in particular some of the young boys who have been thrown in at the deep end.”

Both sides fielded youthful squads, which saw Sale starting with twin brothers Ben and Tom Curry at blind-side and open-side flanker respectfully.

“The Curry brothers are doing really well, they’re only 18 and they’re showing the can push for the first team squad,” explained Pearce.

“They’ll only make the squad better when they are pushing for those spots.”

Sale’s next outing sees them travel to Ashton Gate for the second time in a fortnight, having just beaten the newly-promoted side 31-13, but Pearce knows it won’t be an easy task.

“We need to go again in Bristol, and stick to what we did tonight,” he insisted.

“We had some errors tonight in the wet conditions, and hopefully it won’t be that bad next weekend, but we know even if those mistakes happen we can still pile the pressure on them. We just need to keep our composure.”

This article was written for the Sale Sharks website, and the original post can be viewed here. Image credit to John Marfleet.