Premiership: Sale Sharks 20-7 Newcastle Falcons

AJ MacGinty's points helped lift Sale from the foot of the Premiership table.

Sale claimed their second win of the season, as they came from behind to earn a 20-7 win over Newcastle.

AJ MacGinty kicked Sale in front but captain Will Welch's try put the Falcons 7-3 ahead at the break.

Newcastle's Logovi'i Mulipola was sin-binned for an early tackle and Sale's James Phillips scored under the posts.

The Falcons went down to 13 men when Michael Young was sin-binned and Sale scored two more tries through Bryn Evans and Rohan Janse van Rensburg.

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Sale and Newcastle went into the game at the Premiership's bottom two clubs but victory lifts them two places above both the Falcons, who replace them at the bottom, and Worcester.

Newcastle lost Vereniki Goneva to injury during a scrappy opening to the game and Sale eventually broke the deadlock through MacGinty's boot.

The Falcons put more pressure on Sale and it paid off when captain Welch emerged from the maul to score to the right of the posts while Joel Hodgson added the conversion for Newcastle to lead at the break.

After the break, Mulipola was sin-binned for an early tackle on Marland Yarde, and Sale capitalised as Phillips' converted try put the home side ahead.

Newcastle briefly went down to 13 when Young was shown a yellow card for a high tackle on Byron McGuigan and a few minutes later McGuigan thought he had scored Sale's second but the Television Match Official ruled his foot was in touch.

Evans went over for Sale's second try in the left-hand corner and their third was scored when the Sharks stole a Falcons line-out and Van Rensburg blitzed through Newcastle's defence.

However, it was not all good news for Sale as Yarde was stretchered off in the closing stages of the game.

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Sale director of rugby Steve Diamond:

(On Marland Yarde's injury) "It was just horrendous, not nice to see. We'll show our care for him. It's a dislocation of the knee by the looks of it, so we'll see what the specialists say.

"Newcastle are a top-four side, let's be honest. Ourselves and them haven't hit as much form as we would have hoped.

"When you're in the competition that we're in at the minute, and it is most definitely the strongest league I've coached in, you have to get your home wins and I was delighted we got that.

"I thought we made hard work of it but we managed in the last 20 minutes to control it."

Newcastle director of rugby Dean Richards:

"We were doing ok but we had three reasonably serious injuries. The injuries were in areas which were pretty important.

"We're not happy with the performance from about 30 minutes onwards but there were a couple of reasons behind that, with the injuries and the two yellow cards.

"Sometimes you have to create your own luck and fair dues to Sale, I thought they played well with the intensity they wanted to and needed on the day."

Sale: S James; McGuigan, L James, Van Rensburg, Yarde; MacGinty, Cliff; Harrison, Webber, John, Evans, Phillips, Ross (capt), T Curry, Strauss.

Replacements: Langdon, Tarus, Jones, Ostrikov, Beaumont, Warr, Jennings, O'Connor.

Newcastle: Hammersley; Goneva, Harris, Williams, Sinoti; Flood, Young; Brocklebank, McGuigan, Mulipola, Green, Cavubati, Graham, Welch (capt), Wilson.

Replacements: Cooper, Mavinga, Wilson, Witty, Burrows, Takulua, Hodgson, Penny.

Sin-bin: Logovi'i Mulipola, Michael Young

Referee: Tom Foley