Sale Sharks

Sale Sharks
Full name	Sale Sharks Rugby Union ; Football Club
Nickname (s)	none
Founded	1861
Stadion	AJ Bell Stadium
Places	12,000
Trainer	Steve Diamond
Homepage	www.salesharks.com
league	English Premiership
2018/19	7th place
home	Away

Sale Sharks (officially Sale Sharks Rugby Union Football Club ) is the name of a rugby union team that plays in the highest English league, the Aviva Premiership . It is an offshoot of Sale FC from the city of Sale , but its home games in Salford are played at the AJ Bell Stadium .

history

The club was founded in 1861, making it one of the oldest in England. Since then it has been one of the leading rugby union clubs in the north of England, where the rugby league otherwise dominates. Sale provided players for national teams from an early age and was particularly successful in the 1930s, with players like Hal Sever (England), Claude Davey and Wilf Wooller (Wales) and Ken Fyfe (Scotland).

In 1994 Sale rose to the top division, but struggled with difficulties in the first few years. Over 20,000 fans traveled to the 1997 final of the Pilkington Cup in Twickenham , which the sale lost, but interest quickly fell and the number of spectators in the championship was always significantly lower. But in 1999 the local businessman Brian Kennedy took over the management, put the club on a solid financial basis and laid the foundation for later success by hiring renowned coaches.

In 2002 Sale won the Parker Pen Shield European Cup (now the European Challenge Cup ) with a victory in the final against the Welsh club Pontypridd RFC . In 2003, Cheshire Sports was founded, an umbrella organization with Sale Sharks and Stockport County football club . Both teams shared Edgeley Park Stadium in Stockport for nine years until the Sharks finally moved into the newly built AJ Bell Stadium . They share this stadium in Salford with the rugby league club Salford Red Devils , while the reserve and junior teams continue to use the almost half the size of the stadium on Heywood Road in Sale.

Sale narrowly lost to the Newcastle Falcons in the 2004 Powergen Cup final . The team, however, was able to win the Parker Pen Shield for the second time in 2005; in the final the French club Section Paloise from Pau was defeated. At the end of the 2005/06 season, the Sale Sharks were at the top of the Premiership table and defeated the Leicester Tigers 45:20 in the play-off final in Twickenham .