Chiefs urged to carry form into Premiership

Recent results in the domestic game have seen the Chiefs slip to four defeats but after two impressive outings in European action, Hanks believes the squad should take confidence from those performances into their clash against Sale Sharks on Friday night.

"The last couple of results have given us a bit of confidence going up to Sale this weekend," Hanks told the Western Morning News.

"We'll always try to be as positive as we can be going into each weekend. Sale have had a lot of changes this season and they have really upped their game from last year.

"They will be massively up for it on their home pitch and we won't get anything easily.

"We're going to have to graft for every single thing we get out of the game but we're really looking forward to it and excited about going up there."

"The cups have been positive with the results we've had. The boys played fantastically well last weekend and put in a great performance and to come away with 60-odd points (against I Cavalieri Prato) is testament to how hard they worked.

"That points to the attitude the guys took into the game for the whole 80 minutes and really put Prato to the sword,.

"We're a team that likes to focus week by week and we hope that as long as we keep putting in the performances, the results will look after themselves.

"It hasn't been weighing on our minds, we've reviewed the stuff that hasn't been working so well and we've worked hard on improving things so we take a positive frame of mind into each game. When we get it right, we'll really be a difficult team to beat."