Curry labels missing ingredients in Sale title bid

British & Irish Lions hero Tom Curry says Sale Sharks need to add discipline and consistency to their game if they are to go all the way in PREM Rugby this season.

The flanker, 27, will miss the start of the season after having surgery on a wrist ligament problem.

But he believes Alex Sanderson's squad can improve on last season's third place and play-off semi-final defeat by Leicester Tigers if they can mix in those key ingredients to a physically powerful and skilled unit.

Sale begin their season against Gloucester at the Salford Community Stadium on Thursday, having added South Africans Jacques Vermeulen and Marius Louw, plus England under-20s hooker Nathan Jibulu, to their squad.

Curry, one of the stars of the Lions' 2-1 Test series triumph against Australia this summer, has outlined, in an interview with the BBC's Rugby Union Weekly podcast, exactly what he feels the Sharks need to put right this time.

"Our discipline has to get better," he said. "In some games we are really good but a lot of times we are giving away too many penalties.

"That leads to my second point, of how much more consistent we can be. We're a team that thrives on emotional energy, but with [adding] consistency and maturation we don't have to solely rely on being 'up' for every game. We don't have to be riled up.

"We need to find that discipline but also find another way where it's not just ramming walls and ramming walls, taking your emotional energy."

Curry said he also felt Sale perhaps peaked too early last season and could not quite step up to the challenge of playing Leicester away for a place in the final.

"When it comes to the play-offs, you want to be getting better and accelerating," he said.

"I said to [England coach] Steve [Borthwick] at the end of the Six Nations it felt like we could play another two or three games, as it felt like we were getting better and better.

"In the last couple of seasons we [Sale] probably hit our peak and then stayed there, and that's when you see games where you don't really give the best account of ourselves.

"We'll learn by Christmas where we're at, that period at Christmas when you are week in, week out."

The arrival of new players and addition of talismanic fly-half George Ford's brother Joe as attacking coach enhances their chances, says Curry.

"George says the right thing but in such a way that you are like 'yeah, I love that', and it's the same with Joe," he added.

"They're very eloquent in the way they speak, one sentence flows on to another.

"We've signed some good physical players. We want to be a physical side - I think that's where a lot of our success lies - but again it's how we are going to marry that physical nature with how intelligent we are going to be around the pitch."

Curry also feels he will emerge from the cauldron of those three epic summer Tests, in which he scored two tries, as a better player, having pushed back his boundaries with some all-action displays in attack and defence.

"I kept putting myself in more difficult positions, or trying to push myself during games a bit more, by trying to make myself feel really uncomfortable, doing things I probably wouldn't have thought about doing before," he said.

"[Lions head coach] Andy [Farrell] is a big believer in looking up and playing what's in front of you.

"It sounds really simple but sometimes in a game you lose that. For me that was a really important skill to reinforce."