Steve Diamond: Now in charge of the team at Sale

Sale - bottom of the Premiership having lost all of their opening seven league fixtures this term - released a statement which stressed the Scot had not been dismissed by the club.

At the very least, though, his job there will be redefined, with Diamond clarifying that Redpath was considering an offer to take up a new coaching position at Sale.

Meanwhile, Diamond himself has taken over team affairs. He says he will be in charge for the rest of the campaign, aided by John Mitchell - the former New Zealand coach who has been acting as a consultant at Sale - and, the chief executive hopes, Redpath.

Asked about the situation as it currently stood, Diamond said: "Effectively, now I will be in charge until the end of the season.

"John Mitchell will be consulting during that period, and hopefully Bryan Redpath.

"The situation is that after a lot of poor results we have asked Bryan just to take a little bit of time out, a couple of days off to reconsider what we are doing and how we restructure our rugby department.

"We want him to be involved moving forward. He is contracted for a long time after making a big move from Gloucester and we want him to be involved.

"We just need to get the balance of that right, and it clearly isn't right (judging) by our results, so we just want to change it around a little bit to make sure we get the most out of our resources in the coaching - myself, Bryan and John Mitchell."