Sale Sharks

Barton-upon-Irwell, where the CorpAcq Stadium stands, was not where Sale Sharks started, and it is not even the second address the club has held. The ground once carried the names Salford Community Stadium and AJ Bell Stadium before its current sponsor took over, and it seats 11,404 — smaller than Edgeley Park in Stockport, where the club played from 2003 until the move north in 2012, and smaller still than the reach of the community the club has occupied since 1861, when it took the field simply as Sale Football Club.

The Sharks name only arrived in 1999, the same period in which the club's finances were pulled back from the brink by the Salford businessman Brian Kennedy. What followed took several years to build: by 2005–06, under the French coach Philippe Saint-André, Sale won the Premiership title outright, beating Leicester Tigers 45–20 in the final under the captaincy of Jason Robinson, a World Cup winner three years earlier. Sale have reached one more Premiership final since, in 2022–23, but lost out to Saracens.

Two European Challenge Cup wins, in 2001–02 and 2004–05, sit either side of that runners-up finish, and a Premiership Rugby Cup was added in 2019–20 against Harlequins. Mark Cueto's name still tops the club's own record books, with 304 appearances and 90 tries, a mark built over a career that outlasted several changes of ground and coach. The academy has since produced its own pair of fixtures in the back row, the brothers Tom and Ben Curry, both capped by England.

Against Newcastle, the fixture is known simply as the Northern Derby.