The way Sale Sharks were able to achieve their main objectives over an inexperienced Cardiff Blues side left Coach Steve Diamond feeling very impressed with his squad members.
Despite a 41-3 humiliation of Cardiff, Diamond still insists that the team still has a lot of room for improvement.
The battering of Cardiff in their Anglo-Welsh competition, saw Sharks touchdown a total of seven tries, with two coming from Laurence Pearce.
They have thus moved to the top of their pool, having won two games so far out of three played. Heading into the final round of the matches, Sharks will have a pretty good shot at getting a semi-final spot.
The highly impressed Diamond did not let the victory overshadow the fact that his side had to force the ball at times.
“We asked them to nil the team in tries, we asked the set-piece to be dominant and we asked them to score more than five tries, and we managed to do that.
“We always had the game under control but anybody watching that would think that we had a knock-on coach the amount of times we gave the ball away.
“There was a lot of nervous energy. They all want to do well and sometimes you try too hard and that’s what looked like was happening,” he said.
For Cardiff Blues who have lost three of their matches from three games so far in the competition, it was a very tough evening for them, seeing that they had featured a largely inexperienced team.
Richard Hodges, elite performance manager for Cardiff, believes that despite their battering by Sharks, there were still some positives to be taken away from the game. He also noted that in terms of selection, there was a little mismatch.