Hodgson the hero as Sale go top

It was a classic example of how Sale ? now with three wins out of three ? have caught everyone by surprise.

Given the cushion of a 15-point lead, there was never any doubt from that point that Sale would finish the weekend as they had started it ? astride the Premiership, despite Leicester topping the table on Saturday night.

Wasps were quite simply run off their feet, Jason Robinson?s stroll under the posts in the fifth minute of injury- time no more than Sale deserved for their imaginative brand of dashing rugby. Scotland scrum half Bryan Redpath engineered a move with Australian flanker Stu Pinkerton and veteran centre Jos Baxendell which was carried out at such blinding speed that Robinson had crossed before Wasps knew what had hit them.

The only club in the country to have claimed maximum points from their two opening matches, Sale hounded their London opponents into so many tight corners that the match could easily have been theirs by half-time. And that against a Wasps team unbeaten at Loftus Road in domestic competition for more than 12 months.

Of course, Sale made a similar start last season, winning four of their first five matches only to plumb the depths of the bottom three.

But the summer acquisition of a front five worthy of a Premiership stage promises to make a colossal difference.

That Sale have rebuilt without packing their team with southern hemisphere signings makes their success all the more commendable. Pinkerton, their only Australian import, adds real quality to their back row, while the return from New Zealand of Kevin Yates, the ear-biting scandal behind him at last, means it can only be a matter of time before England reinstate him to their squad.