Sale have revised their season ambitions after briefly going top of the Gallagher Premiership with a dominant 39-0 win against London Irish.

The Salford-based outfit have won six of their past eight games in the league and sat above Exeter on Friday night before the Chiefs returned to the summit with a 57-20 victory over Bath on Saturday.

Sharks director of rugby Steve Diamond had initially set his side the target of finishing in the top four but now has his sights set on a home semi-final.

"I don't know about top, but all we need to do is finish in the top two," Diamond said. "It was about top four, but we've got to move our goal a little bit higher.

"If you get in the play-offs, it's difficult to win in this competition away from home, as everybody knows. If you're going to finish in the top four, why not try and finish in the top two?

"We've got Harlequins away after the (Premiership Rugby Cup) final and Exeter at home. I think if we can get four or five points out of them two games we will be in a good position moving forward."

The Sharks have gone on an excellent run in the Premiership but have done so without some key players.

Faf De Klerk and new signing Lood De Jager both returned from injury to make a significant impact against Irish, while the likes of Mark Wilson, Tom Curry, Akker Van Der Merwe and Rohan Janse Van Rensburg are still to come back.

There was plenty of intrigue over debutant Springbok powerhouse De Jager on Friday, and Diamond believes his presence will take the pressure off experienced lock Bryn Evans at the line-out.

He added: "He's (Evans) our line-out guru and him and Lood have been working behind the scenes for three or four months on it, albeit it probably wasn't the best area of our game tonight.

"We lost half a dozen line-outs, so maybe I've not made training old school enough over the last two weeks. We might have to turn that up a bit this week!"