Tony Hanks was proud of Sale's display in their 19-14 LV= Cup victory over Scarlets, with Hendre Fourie marking his home debut with a try.

Edwards: Goes in for a Sale try

The Scarlets were still able to progress to the semi-finals, where they travel to Northampton, but they were second best for much of the match with Fourie the game's outstanding performer after being sidelined with injury for much of the season.

Hanks said: "It was important that Hendre Fourie's first home game was a good one and he did play strongly. It didn't look like he'd been out for five months at all.

"They were poor conditions today but we did enough in the first half to be in touch, and then I thought we managed the game pretty well in the second half, but in normal Sale fashion we gave them a chance in the last couple of minutes.

"I was just pleased with the attitude. We've never questioned effort but last week maybe some people that watched us questioned that and you take that to heart really.

"So it was up to us to go out there and put in a performance that we could be proud of ourselves and that people could go away and say they were proud to support us."

Welsh fly-half Nick MacLeod kicked 14 points against his compatriots for the Sharks while the Scarlets had led at half-time thanks to Peter Edwards' try.

In the end they were indebted to a late Stephen Jones penalty that earned them a bonus point and boss Nigel Davies was far from satisfied with his team's performance.

He said: "That was a very strong Sale side, and we came with a team that was good enough, but on the day we weren't.

"We were poor in the second half, obviously the elements were against us but we still should have been a lot smarter than we were.

"We've been happy with the way we've performed this year, that was not the standard that we've set ourselves.

"We're delighted we've got into the semi-final, notwithstanding the fact we're disappointed it's not a home one.

"What we've got to do now is flick back to our league season where we're fighting hard to get into the top four and we've got a couple of key games coming up."