Sale Sharks circle Edinburgh for the first time

History is set to be made on Saturday when Sale Sharks and Edinburgh meet in European competition for the first time.

The match will be played out at the AJ Bell Stadium in Manchester and proceedings will be under the watchful eye of experienced referee Romain Poite of France.

Edinburgh boast a good record against English opposition in the Champions Cup, having won each of their last three encounters of such a nature.

Sale's experience of Scottish opposition in this context has been twofold; with one win and one loss against Glasgow Warriors in 2002-03 and 2019-20 respectively.

Sale will be feeling somewhat bruised after Round 1 in which they were outdone by Toulon in the latter’s own backyard. It looked, for a while, like Toulon would run away with the game with the score at 26-0 with 25 minutes to play but Sale showed some promise by digging deep and posting a brace of tries to salvage some pride before the final whistle blew.

Edinburgh also emerged on the losing side in the first round, although, the Scotsmen can be proud of their efforts as they pushed a La Rochelle outfit very close in a hard-fought contest.

Edinburgh’s forwards gave a showing which will make the big Sale pack sit up and take notice while the latter might also place a magnifying glass over their defence after producing the lowest tackle success rate of the opening round.

It will be an interesting tussle at the AJ Bell, especially considering that the sides have never met.