Brewer - Pace the key

Brewer: Pleased with first win

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Sale head coach Mike Brewer believes that the pace of his side's play was the key factor in their season-opening 35-18 win against Newcastle.

The Sharks dominated for large spells against the Falcons at Edgeley Park as Brewer saw his first competitive match in charge end in a comfortable victory.

Fly-half Nick Macleod scored a total of 22 points and debutants Karena Wihongi and Tom Brady crossed the try-line during the contest on Friday night.

Brewer was happy to see to see some training ground work pay off as the hosts looked dangerous whenever they secured quick attacking ball.

"I am really happy with the intensity. We played at a pace that got away from Newcastle, they couldn't stand the pace," he said.

Intensity

"We have been training with intensity and pace and I think that won us the game. I was really happy that the guys put on the playing field the stuff we have been doing in training.

"I am a hard taskmaster, I don't flog the players but it is important we train with intensity otherwise you don't have it when you play."

But Brewer did recognise that there is still room for improvement, saying that he was less than impressed with the Sharks' set-piece work.

He added: "Our set-piece was poor. We only had a 33 per cent success rate at the line-out and on all but one of our scrums our scrum was fractured," the former

"You have got to be happy with 35 points against a Newcastle side that came to play but we know we have lots to work on."

Classy

The former All Blacks flanker singled out Macloed for praise after the former Cardiff Blues player confidently filled the gap left by injured Charlie Hodgson.

"Nick is a classy player. He can play at 10, 12 or at full-back, he even had a little go at nine tonight," he said.

Newcastle boss Alan Tait was left lamenting some costly errors and indiscipline at the breakdown that cost them several penalties.

Although he admitted the Falcons were below-par, he said that his side did not think they had been second best on the night.

He said: "I have asked the boys if they thought they were outmuscled or outplayed by better players and they said no.

"Our mistakes cost us, we were sloppy around the breakdown and we need to get some thing cleared up on the laws there as we seemed to get penalised a lot.

"There is a lot to fix but the boys are confident they can sort things out. Our ball retention was poor and made a couple of bad decisions. We needed a good blow-out and we got it."