Furious Saints coach West hits back at Sky pundit Sanderson’s ‘illegal’ scrummaging allegation

Sanderson was critical of the Northampton scrum during the 34-16 win against Newport at Rodney Parade on January 25.

The former Worcester and England flanker accused Saints of using illegal techniques in the set piece.

West has taken offence to Sanderson’s views and even phoned the analyst, brother of Saracens forwards coach Alex, to express his annoyance.

“The set piece stuff we’re doing here we pride ourselves on and I think we’re doing well,” said the Saints coach.

“I know after the Newport game we had a bit of criticism from one of the Sky pundits, which was very disappointing because if you look at what took place we were dominant and we were working hard.

“Our mentality is that we’re going to scrum, we’re going to go forward and we’re going to dominate the opposition and for somebody to say what we do in our scrum is illegal, we found it very frustrating.

“I look at scrums every day and there’s always something new to learn so for someone to make such a clear statement that we’re scrummaging illegally is out of order.

“It’s something we’ve got in the back of our minds.”

And he added: “For somebody to come out with such a sweeping statement, and somebody who only does a bit of punditry at the weekend and has got a job somewhere else and probably hasn’t watched another game since then, it’s pretty disappointing.

“People will be sat at home watching those comments and they will take something from what he says because he’s supposed to be an expert. It’s frustrating.”