Philippe Saint-André: 'Coaching, I find, is like a nice red wine'

It is nothing new for the flat meadows alongside Carrington Lane on the southern outskirts of Manchester to feel the daily tread of sportsmen at the summit of their domestic league and going well in Europe.

But this year it is not the Manchester United players arriving at training with a spring in their step, it is the Sale Sharks boys a couple of fields away. And forget about Eric Cantona; the only inspirational Frenchman who matters in these parts now is the charismatic Philippe Saint-André, the 38-year-old former captain of France who, having successfully coached Gloucester and made unfashionable Bourgoin a formidable force in French rugby, has this season masterminded Sale's climb to the top of the Guinness Premiership and an unbeaten record in the Heineken Cup, which will be extended to five matches if the Sharks beat Newport Gwent Dragons on Sunday.

An unprecedented quarter-final place beckons.

We'll come to all that, but for the moment the main thing on Saint-André's mind is food. Mountains of carbohydrates are being dished out in the Sale canteen, and the coach is waiting for his helping, a vast pile of pasta and potatoes with a slice of white bread on the side. I offer him the chance to eat first and talk later but of course he is a Frenchman, genetically programmed to scoff and natter at the same time.

What, I ask him as he tucks in, is his opinion of the food in Manchester?

"Completely different from France," he says, in a French accent to which the printed word does no justice; all I can say is that it makes René from 'Allo 'Allo sound like Raymond Brooks-Ward. "I ask for bread and look, look what they give to me." He holds up the slice of factory white with due horreur. "But I eat nice food. My wife, she cooks a lot at home. The weather is the worst thing for me. I don't care if it's cold, but the rain! It was a big shock when I first arrived. We started training in July 2004 and it went 25 days raining. In July! I can't believe it. I went to buy a barbecue and it was 40 per cent discount. In July! Before I lived in Cheltenham and it was St Tropez in comparison with Manchester."

Saint-André chuckles. He chuckles a lot. "But I like the life here. The people in the north of England are very friendly. My wife loves it. She's Venezuelan so she speaks Spanish to our son, who is three years, and I speak French to him, and he goes to an English pre-school, so he will grow up speaking three languages. Me, I hardly can speak one!" Another delighted chuckle.

"Also, here I can go to the supermarket and nobody knows me. It is a football city, not rugby. In Clermont-Ferrand [for whom Saint-André played with great distinction] it was just rugby. In Gloucester, the same. In Bourgoin, the same. Here, we play in Stockport and Stockport County are in the fifth football division, I think, but in the local newspapers there are more articles about them than us. Completely different.

"For example, we ring restaurants here and sometimes they are full. There is no room. In France, one table was always available for me. But my wife prefers this because we live like normal people. In France, we could get the table, yes, but by dessert there were six people around it, fanatics, asking me about rugby! She said we never ate one to one. Never!"

It's a good story because it underlines the magnitude of Saint-André's stature in his own country. As a child he was a tennis prodigy - among the best three or four players of his age in France - but aged 15 he chose rugby because he enjoyed the team ethic. "It was more fun to win at rugby," he explains, "because you shared it with 14 other guys. And easier to lose for the same reason. I was not selfish enough to play just tennis. And anyway I didn't have the arm to be world class. I don't regret it."

Nor should he. He was a winger of rare and marvellous poise, who played in the same era and on the same flank as David Campese, Jonah Lomu and Rory Underwood, and stood comparison with all of them. He played 69 times for France, 34 times as captain, and in 1994 led the French to two Test wins over the All Blacks, in New Zealand. That is the stuff of which legends are made, in Clermont-Ferrand if not in Sale.

Moreover, he scored one of the greatest tries in history, kindled by Serge Blanco under the French posts at Twickenham in the Grand Slam-deciding match of 1991. Here, it is sometimes called The Try From Nowhere. In France, Saint-André tells me, they are more effusive. There, it remains "L'Essai du Siècle" (the try of the century).

"Do you remember [Didier] Camberabero's little chip, kicking the ball from close to the touchline into the middle of the pitch? You don't that see any more.

"Rugby has changed. In my time, the wings, like Campese and Lomu, were the stars, because they scored the tries. Now, everyone scores and props are quicker than wings used to be. Everything has changed. I started in the amateur era, when next to you was a doctor, a farmer, a businessman, all playing with the love. But you can't be nostalgic. Once, people went to London from Manchester by horse. Now, they fly. It's the evolution of life."

As for his Try of the Century, it did not stop England winning 21-19, and in a way that experience has informed his coaching philosophy: to play pretty rugby is merely desirable; to play winning rugby is paramount.

"This is why I am so pleased with the development of Charlie Hodgson," he says, of his England fly-half. "I say to him: 'Look, Charlie, the first thing is to win the game'. Before he played all the time wide, now he has more keys in his pocket. He plays the up-and-under, he plays with the forwards, he hits midfield, and he plays with the conditions. If it is raining he kicks in the corner. That is how to win a game. You need not just game plan A but game plan A, B, C and D. Each team gives you different problems, so you can't have only one solution."

Saint-André contemplates his shrinking pile of pasta. "For me, rugby is like a meal," he adds. "I am not happy with just one plate, I want a starter, main course, cheese and dessert. That is why it is wrong to say that my teams play the French way. In some ways it is true. In France, if the forwards are struggling in the scrum, then after five minutes the backs will say, 'I don't think we will win today'. In France there is more focus on the scrum, in England more on the line-out. I love the scrum. It is the best form of attack, and the best form of defence. Laurent Seigne, a former tight-head, says I am a frustrated front-row player.

"But I want us to be able to play many ways. We need balance. I am a former wing, but if I scored tries it was because the forwards were good. There is a saying in France; you need guys to carry the piano and guys to play the piano. We have men like Cueto and Robinson to play the piano, Sheridan and Bruno to carry it. The forwards win the money, the backs spend the money. But you can't spend it if it's not there."

While I digest his wonderful metaphors, he digests the last of his carbs, and we head downstairs from the noisy canteen for the sanctity of an empty changing-room. On the way, he stops for a brief but animated chat with his mighty No 8, Sébastien Chabal, one of five French players in his squad. It is, he tells me, too many. "I wanted only four, but there was one particular player I couldn't find anywhere else. Next year we will have only four in the squad. My first job is to have success with Sale, but you need guys from the area, also. It is important to have a connection with the area."

In which respect, I venture, he differs from his compatriot Arsène Wenger, in whose Arsenal teams Englishmen are rare enough, let alone Englishmen from the London borough of Islington.

"Football is a different business. But coaching, whether football or rugby, is the same. I would like to meet Wenger. I would like to talk to him about being so successful for a long time at the same club, about being a Frenchman in England, bringing in lots of new ideas. I would like to meet Alex Ferguson too. Coaching, I find, is like a nice red wine. You get better as you get older, more confident, less panic, your management skills improve. At Gloucester I made a mistake. I was a player there and then a coach, but I had never coached before and I hired a coaching staff that was mainly French, because when you are less sure of yourself you surround yourself with people you know. I think I turned that team into one of the best in England but I upset a lot of people. I had to sack guys I'd played with.

"Here, it is completely different. My fitness coach, Nick Johnston, is English; my forwards coach, Kingsley Jones, is Welsh; my team manager, Paul Smith, is a former Sale prop. I'm more confident about my system."

However, his own increased confidence and the success that has accompanied it, has presented Saint-André with one of the paradoxes of sport: that achievement breeds expectation which in turn can breed at least a perception of failure. "Each week, people expect more and more," he says, adding that when he arrived at Sale he had only a handful of internationals in the team; now there's an armful, whose loss in international weeks will be keenly felt.

"When we brought Bruno here, he was the ninth hooker in France. He'd been living in Béziers, nice beach, nice food. Since he came he's lost more than half a stone. We've improved his fitness, improved his line-out throw. He was a good player, now he's an outstanding player, and the No 1 hooker in France. With Sheridan, Cueto, Titterell, Chris Jones, it is a similar story. And Magnus Lund will be England's No 7 very soon, I think." A broad smile. "We are victims of our success."

This begs an inevitable question. Sale's owner, the double-glazing tycoon Brian Kennedy, pounced as soon as he heard that Saint-André - angry that his own ambition was not matched by the suits at Bourgoin - had been sacked by the French club. The appointment has already paid dividends. But might Kennedy, too, become a victim of his own success? Might the upwardly mobile Saint-André perhaps begin to eye Bernard Laporte's job as coach of the French team?

"It is difficult to say that I would not like the job one day," he says, when I pose the question. "For all coaches, the biggest challenge is to become coach of your own country. But if I get it, it will be because I deserve to, and I'm not sure that I deserve it yet. I can still improve by optimising my strengths and minimising my weaknesses. But the really important thing is to work with passion. The day I start coaching just for my salary is the day I will stop."

It is reasonable to assume that on the same day, the rain will stop falling on Manchester.

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