Leicester 54 - 21 Sale: Pete Anglesea endures painful start at Sale

New Sale coach Pete Anglesea said the recent turmoil at the club affected his players as they slumped to a crushing defeat to Leicester at Welford Road yesterday.

The Tigers, who were without the services of England half-backs Toby Flood and Ben Youngs and forwards Tom Croft and Jordan Crane, ran in 21 points in the opening 13 minutes to leave the visitors reeling. They racked up eight tries in the match with two each for Manu Tuilagi and Scott Hamilton.

The defeat marked a disappointing start for Sale's new coaching team led by former captain Anglesea, who replaced Mike Brewer - sacked just before Christmas.

"My job starts here," Anglesea said. "This was a benchmark for me to see the state of our position. Welford Road is a very hard place to find confidence and it was very frustrating watching the boys out there.

"Obviously in the first 20 minutes they seemed to be affected by the off-field matters and heads went down. However, we scored three nice tries and some of the senior players will have to take on more responsibility as it is a mammoth task."

Leicester's other four tries came from Anthony Allen, Alesana Tuilagi, Rob Hawkins, and Matt Smith, while Asaeli Boko, Dwayne Peel and Kristian Ormsby replied for Sale.

Jeremy Staunton was on song with the boot for Leicester, kicking seven conversions, with Nick Macleod successful with his three conversion attempts for the visitors.

Leicester's director of rugby Richard Cockerill said: "With them losing their coach we didn't know what to expect. It was a big start from us with three tries but we went somewhat off the boil from there.

"The boys took their scoring opportunities, but conceding three tries was not great."