By Srinesian Saleanian
June 3 2007

Once upon a time, it was rare to see a Sale player in England colours (or any other national team, for that matter). Those times have changed and now we complain that our team is routinely decimated by international call-ups. Strinesian Saleanian paints a red cross on his face, puts a red rose between his teeth and has a look at a record of continuous Sale representation for England.

When Maggie, CJ, Splinters and Deano took the field for the anthems in Pretoria on Saturday, it continued a run of 59 matches since an England match day 22 did not contain a single Sale player.

It doesn’t yet approach Leicester’s magnificent 16 year continuous record of 167 consecutive England matches for Leicester players.  Unfortunately, thanks to the brilliant timing of the South Africa Tour (meaning that no Leicester players could be selected) last week’s 1st test was the first since 3rd November 1990, against Argentina at Twickenham, where England took the field Tigerless.  Wasps and Bath also lost the opportunity to extend their records, which I believe now means that Sale have the longest consecutive streak…unless there is a Falcons fan out there who knows different.

The last full England international with no Sale representation was the 50-10 victory over Wales at Twickenham, in the 2002 Six Nations tournament.  Jason Robinson, Charlie Hodgson and Pat Sanderson had all been capped before this date but were not selected for this match – even though Robbo played in every other round of that year’s 6 Nations competition.  Indeed, but for missing this game, the run of Sale representation would have been much longer, extending back towards Jason’s England debut against Italy the previous season.

Hopefully, Sale’s current crop of England internationals (Cueto, Lund, Jones, Turner, Schofield, Hodgson, Sheridan and not forgetting Hanley) and potential full internationals (Wiggy, Foden, Tait, Hills, Briggs, Bell, Cox, Vilk, Kuadey…..etc) will see the current run of 59 not out extended well beyond this Autumn’s world cup.

Meanwhile, the list is as follows: