Sale Sharks: RFU clears club of coronavirus outbreak wrongdoing

Sale have been cleared of any wrongdoing in their handling of a coronavirus outbreak last month.

The Rugby Football Union and Public Health England North West have been investigating the Premiership club, where there were 27 positive cases.

It led to Sale having to forfeit their final game of the 2019-20 campaign and miss out on the play-offs.

Players were accused of partying after their Premiership Cup final win - claims which the report rejected.

At the time of the victory on 21 September, Manchester had one of the highest rates of Covid-19 in the country. The report said that while the club did have celebrations, they adhered to coronavirus protocols.

"It is accepted that most, if not all, of the Sale Sharks' squad returned to their training ground at Carrington following the match," the RFU report stated.

"They were joined by members of the club who had been specifically PCR tested in order to attend.

"The nature of the event was to celebrate the cup final win and the passing of a long-serving staff member.

"No evidence has been found to show that any player or member of club staff left the Carrington training ground and went to any other venue apart from their home."

'We've been exonerated'

While tracing the cause of the outbreak was outside the scope of the RFU investigation, the report did say that neither Public Health England nor the club could determine how the virus got into the squad.

"I'm delighted with the decision that we've been exonerated," director of rugby Steve Diamond said on Tuesday.

"There was a natural spike in the region and put that together with we were given a false negative, they would have been contributory factors to the outbreak.

"What happened to us could have happened to anybody. It happened to Wasps to a lesser extent and it's recently happened to Leicester. We were the first and we were victims because we had a chance to go into the top four."

Sale repeatedly denied reports players and staff had broken any guidelines and protocols, labelling claims players had gone out partying and socialising in Manchester as "completely inaccurate and untrue".

In a news conference previewing the start of the 2020-21 Premiership campaign, Diamond said he was "a bit disappointed" in comments on the issue made by Bristol boss Pat Lam, Worcester director of rugby Alan Solomons and former England wing Ugo Monye.

"[They] all jumped in on these false allegations that we were partying in the inner city and the student areas of Manchester which was a real poor thing to say with no evidence and obviously it was factually incorrect," Diamond added.

Investigation leaves 'unanswered questions'

Analysis - BBC rugby union correspondent Chris Jones

While the investigation found no grounds to charge Sale, there are still some unanswered questions.

Most importantly, how did the outbreak spread so widely through the squad? Was it through normal rugby training, or through a social gathering at the club's training centre?

If it's the former, then that may have implications for the Premier 15s, the Championship, and the grassroots game, which is still yet to restart.

Furthermore, the fact that the RFU have made recommendations around contact tracing and social distancing suggests the procedures were not quite tight enough in the first place.