Steve Diamond 'embarrassed' and 'pissed off' as Sale Sharks crumble to defeat against rejuvenated Harlequins

The Sale boss saw a positive first half fall apart as they were beaten 27-3 in the second period to suffer a heavy defeat that leaves Harlequins flying high in second

Sale Sharks sufferd a heavy 51-23 defeat on the opening weekend of the new Premeirship season (Getty)

Steve Diamond admitted he was “embarrassed” and “pissed off” with Sale Sharks’ heavy 51-23 defeat by Harlequins on the opening weekend of the Premiership season, with Paul Gustard’s side sitting pretty alongside Exeter Chiefs at the top of the table.

Sale suffered the early loss of England flanker Tom Curry when he was knocked unconscious in the third minute, but recovered well and actually led the encounter 17-10 approaching the break.

But Diamond was left unimpressed with how Sale fell apart in the second half as Quins lost the second half 27-3 after three further tries for the hosts, and the consequences are set to be felt on Monday when they begin preparations for next Sunday’s visit of Worcester to the AJ Bell Stadium.

“By half-time, we’ve created some opportunities and scored and then we couldn’t receive kick-offs and get ourselves out of there,” Diamond said. “Then it was score, score, score either way. I wasn’t too fussed at half-time, being honest. I thought we had enough about us if we kept hold of the ball but we couldn’t do that.

“We made probably four defensive errors which were unlike us and they capitalised on it.

“[The players are] a bit embarrassed about it, myself included. We’ll see what we’re like at training on Monday.”

Diamond did at least confirm that Curry appeared to be showing no after-effects of the heavy blow he took when colliding with Quins full-back Aaron Morris’ knee as he claimed an early restart, with the fixture list allowing enough time between now and next week’s fixture for him to come through the return-to-play protocols and feature against the Warriors.

But for new Harlequins boss Gustard there were plenty of positives to take out of the six-try victory. The former England defence coach - who received plenty of good luck messages in the week from Eddie Jones, Steve Borthwick and the other few members still with the national team - refused to get carried away, and even kept his defensive hat on to rue the two tries they conceded in the first half.

Tom Curry is carried off on a stretcher after injuring his head (Getty)

“Talking with the boys there the humbling thing is that we know we can play better,” Gustard said. “There's areas to improve but it's a fantastic start of course.

“If you'd given me this start on Monday of course I'd have taken it. I was really pleased we found ways to come back from a negative into a positive, conceding three and then scoring seven just before half-time. That's the kind of resilience we're going to need.

“There's a lot of nice things about today, the weather was cracking, we had good support, a good win.

“But my feet are firmly on the ground, it's only one win, we've won nothing, apart from this individual game of course. We respect Northampton [next Friday], so we go again.”