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Punished for being too strong

30/ 1/2008

PHILIPPE Saint-Andre believes his Sharks pack have become the victims of their own scrummaging success.

In the absence of the weight and power to match Sale’s front five, rival teams look for other methods to spoil the scrum.

Harlequins were the beneficiaries on Friday.

Seemingly unable to compete, they duped the referee into believing it was the superior Sharks who should be punished.

Saint-Andre said: "We were penalised a lot in the scrum again, I don’t understand why.

"We have guys like Andrew Sheridan or Lionel Faure and we are penalised in the scrum all the time!

"In [Quins] scrums we went forwards, in our scrums they didn’t want to scrummage so they wheeled us and we get penalised.

"It’s not common sense.

"We have got a good scrum and yet we are penalised more than all the teams in the Guinness Premiership.

"I don’t know if we need props or if we need open side flankers to play at prop!"