Browse Sections

• Stockport County FC
• Sale Sharks
• Local football
• Local cricket

We’re coming to get Roux

Jenny Dixon
14/11/2007

BRAGGING rights are at stake for Sharks head coach Kingsley Jones when his team face Petrarca in Italy this weekend.

Jones was room-mates with Petrarca coach Paul Roux for a week during an international coaching course that the pair undertook in New Zealand last summer.

Although top of Jones’ agenda is ensuring Sharks win the European Challenge Cup tie, he admitted that South African Roux will have the bigger boast should his team defeat tournament favourites Sharks.

Jones said: "He is a good coach, he’s ambitious and he’ll want to do well so we’ll certainly respect them and we’ll have to perform well for the first 40 minutes.

"But of course we should be the winning team with the squad we have.

"I think he’ll have a lot more to brag about if they win than if I’m the winning coach."

Petrarca have a relatively low profile on the European rugby scene, but their squad is more formidable than the name suggests.

International Fijian flyhalf Nicky Little plays for the side, although he is currently out with a knee injury, and other players include new signing Ludovic Mercier and Sisa Koyamaibole, who played in the back row for Fiji in the World Cup.

Jones warned that his Sharks team cannot afford to be be complacent.

"We want to point out to the players as well as everybody else that it [the result] is by no means a foregone conclusion," he said. "Nothing’s ever won on paper."