Sale star sent off for outrageous bodyslam on Nick Tompkins

Their director of rugby Alex Sanderson had one theory on the red card incident.

"Byron trains at UFC on his time off so maybe he just had a flashback of some sort of ultimate fighting session he's done. I haven't spoken to him.

"He's a great lad, one of the hardest workers. The emotion, the occasion, the fact we hadn't scored - I was feeling that too. It probably got the better of him.

"We've now got an invasion of London planned. We're in The Ship in Wandsworth to lick our wounds. Then we've got a rat race and the magical world of Winter Wonderland on Monday.

"Then it's a couple of days off and we're into prepping for Ospreys [Sale's next game on Sunday 12 December]."