Premiership: London Irish 36-18 Sale: Exiles stun Sharks to continue good form

Lucio Cinti scored London Irish's third try against Sale

London Irish survived second-half pressure to see off Sale Sharks and seal their fifth win in six games.

Irish raced into a 22-3 lead after tries by Hugh O'Sullivan, Agustin Creevy and Lucio Cinti.

But Sale fought back to reduce the gap to only four points before losing second-row Cobus Wiese to injury.

That left them short-handed and late scores by Tarek Haffar and James Stokes wrapped up the Exiles' success.

Irish made the most of the early running and Paddy Jackson's penalty kick opened the scoring before O'Sullivan rounded off a flowing Exiles move to dive over in the corner for the first try of the afternoon.

Rob du Preez got Sale on the scoresheet from a penalty and, with Jackson sending another long-range attempt wide of the target, there were only five points between the sides with half an hour on the clock.

However, the Exiles seized control with two neatly placed 50-22 kicks in quick succession - the first of them pumped downfield by Creevy, who then stormed over from the resulting rolling maul.

Jackson followed suit with another 50-22 and Irish switched the play with a cross-field kick that enabled Cinti to score their third try - although Sale's Jean-Luc du Preez crossed the line just before the turnaround to reduce the deficit to 12 points.

With Facundo Gigena shown a yellow card for a high tackle on Joe Carpenter, Sale applied a sustained spell of pressure at the start of the second period - initially soaked up by the Irish defence.

But Sam Dugdale burst across the whitewash to raise the Sharks' hopes of a comeback and it needed a crushing challenge by Rory Jennings to force Wiese into touch when he looked set for a certain try.

Having used all their replacements, Wiese's departure left Sale a man short for the final 12 minutes and, although George Ford narrowed the gap to four with a routine penalty kick, Irish took advantage of their depleted visitors.

A break from halfway enabled prop Haffar to score in the corner and earn breathing space for his side before Stokes cut through a tiring Sale defence to add another converted score two minutes from time.

Irish move up a place to fifth in the Premiership table, while the Sharks - who have now lost three of their last four games - remain six points behind leaders Saracens in second.

London Irish director of rugby Declan Kidney:

"They [Sale] bring a lot of physicality, so you just have to match that mentally and be prepared to take a few hits yourself.

"The players showed what the team means to them in the way they went about business today. We won key moments and it's so important how you react to those moments you do win.

"We still need to improve - just because it goes your way it doesn't mean we should stop improving. If we can keep improving, we can keep making it difficult for other teams.

"We have no pretentions about being anything special, we just want to go about our business and see where it takes us."

Sale director of rugby Alex Sanderson told BBC Radio Manchester:

"I've got to take a bit, because I rolled the dice and put all the bench on early - that's why we went down to 14 men.

"The lads still had belief and talked about taking it play by play in the second half and we largely dominated. Right up to that point I think we had the momentum.

"You have to squeeze teams more consistently than what we did today. I think that was the major difference - what we did in their 22 and what they did in ours.

"They were sharper at executing and they found attacking space from those cross-field kicks, which punished us to the tune of two tries, so I think they were well deserving of the victory."

London Irish: Loader, Cinti, Van Rensburg, Jennings, Hassell-Collins, Jackson, O'Sullivan, Gigena, Creevy, Hoskins, Ratuniyarawa, Simmons, Rogerson, Pearson, Fa'aso'o.

Replacements: Willemse, Haffar, Chawatama, Caulfield, Basham, Cunningham-South, Powell, Stokes.

Sin-bin: Gigena (37).

Sale: Carpenter, Roebuck, R du Preez, Mills, O'Flaherty, Ford, Quirke, Rodd, Ashman, Oosthuizen, Wiese, Hill, Ross, Dugdale, J-L du Preez.

Replacements: Taylor, McIntyre, Schonert, Beaumont, D du Preez, Warr, S James, Reed,

Referee: Matthew Carley

• Subscribe to the Rugby Union Weekly podcast

• Add rugby union alerts to your BBC Sport app