Seven weeks behind everyone else
That is the deficit Tom Curry carried back from Sale’s pre-season camp in Portugal this week. His team-mates spent the summer training. He spent it rehabbing.
Hip surgery, a rod fitted, stem cell treatment. And now the question that follows him everywhere: should he change the way he plays? Curry does not entertain it. “The only way to get good and stay good is to play games,” he told Planet Rugby.
The 2025-2026 season never gave him the run of minutes he wanted, and he refuses to dress that up. “I could come back and play, and I didn’t quite manage to take that chance late in the season,” he says. The plan for this campaign is stated flatly: 80 minutes, week after week.
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Twelve signings, and one of them is 37
Sale went shopping this summer and came back with a dozen experienced bodies. Courtney Lawes, Joe Marchant, Alex Lozowski. Nicky Smith and Tomas Francis to reinforce a front row that needed it. Fijians Ponipate Loganimasi and Elia Canakaivata for the back end.
Lawes is the name Curry keeps circling back to. A 37-year-old with 105 caps, two seasons at Brive behind him, and a return to England confirmed the same day he put pen to paper at Sale. “He’s still the same, if not better,” Curry says, dwelling on the older man’s calmness more than anything else.
Sale need calm. Seventh last season. Five wins from 18. Twenty-seven points off the play-offs, one away win all year, never two on the bounce. Marco Bortolami lasted six months before leaving in December, defence coach Byron McGuigan went in March. Toulouse ran up 71 points on them in January. Saracens came to Manchester in April and won 66-0.
November is not a runway
England face Australia, Japan and New Zealand at Twickenham this autumn, and half the country has already framed it as preparation for Australia 2027. Curry is not interested in that framing.
“You see teams arrive at a World Cup full of momentum and it doesn’t work out. These games matter because they’re the next four,” he says.
The finisher tag gets the same short treatment from a player who has spent a good chunk of his Test career entering after the hour. “The best players bring energy for 20 minutes. It’s not that they bring energy and suddenly become good. You’re just good at rugby.”
Bath visit the CorpAcq Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
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