What an incredible day Saturday 5th May was for The DM Lab at Sale Sharks!
If you didn’t already know, we were invited to Sale Sharks by our partners UKFast for an awesome matchday hospitality experience, the match itself and then onto The Mere for their End of Season Awards Dinner.
The day started early with a 3 hour drive but we didn’t care. It was worth it! We were immediately welcomed by the Sharks hospitality and Alice from the UKFast team. Soon after we arrived, Lawrence Jones MBE arrived and was at the table next to us. We were immediately starstruck (no shame in admitting it!). We had a quick chat with Mr. Jones and the festivities started shortly after.
We couldn’t have asked for a better table.
A particular shout out to Daryl (a UKFast account manager), Deb, and Jo (from GBG PLC) who we ended up spending the whole day (and night) with! You guys made us feel at ease and welcome in an otherwise quite daunting (and overwhelming) situation. Great food, live music, words from Cuets and Denny then it was out to watch the game. A game of enormous significance to Sale Sharks and we were avidly checking Twitter to see how Bath v Gloucester was playing out in the hope that a top 6 finish and European action was secured for the 2018 / 2019 season.
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Having been to the AJ Bell stadium before (in the Printerland East stand opposite) our seats this time were in the West stand, behind Mr. Jones (!) who was behind Dimes (!) so pretty awesome seats right on the halfway line.
However things didn’t go Shark’s way on the pitch but it was still a beautiful day for some rugby and the hospitality continued so absolutely nothing to grumble about despite the final score and results elsewhere not going Sharks way either.
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Following this there was the man of the match presentation and then we were transported off to The Mere once again courtesy of UKFast. Once again, thank you so much guys! We were greeted with a drinks reception at The Mere and again drinks paid for by UKFast. As the players began to arrive we began to, once again, get more starstruck. We’re probably old enough to know better but the inner fanboy in us remained under control…until later in the evening at least!
The End of Season Awards Dinner
The Shark’s players – wow – what an incredible bunch! Huge celebrity sports stars (in our eyes) just mingled and chatted to everyone. The first player we met was TJ Ioane, who came over – because of Dale’s dreads, so the conversation started! Laughs, drinks – the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. There are some BIG dudes there, Ross Harrison, Jono Ross and Rob Webber to name just a few!
At our table was flyhalf AJ MacGinty.
It was great to meet you AJ, really approachable and it didn’t take long for us to get a photo! A couple of drinks, a bit of food and the evening was in full flow. The awards were hosted by Sky Sports presenter, James Cooper and the evening was full of laughs. Huge congratulations to all the winners and farewell and best wishes to those leaving the Sharks this summer.
Once the awards were finished, we’d had a couple of drinks and so we shamelessly embarked on getting photos with the players. A massive thank you to the players for just being awesome, honestly we’ve never experienced anything like it! To be fair, some of the players we were too scared to approach but as we write this, we absolutely regret not getting stuck in. Special shout out to departing Mike Haley – we wanted a photo but man, you were having such a good time we didn’t want to bother you! All the best with the move and the international honours pursuit. Awesome player and we, as fans, are gutted to see you leave Sharks.
As the evening drew to a close we and our new friends headed off, not before picking up our complimentary goody bags. Trying to play it cool, we resisted having a rummage but when we got back to our accommodation, we were like kids at Christmas! What an awesome goody bags – that will take some beating for sure! Once again, thank you Sharks and UKFast for these, they were amazing! The team signed shirt is getting framed and put up alongside our other shirt Denny kindly signed and sent us. Absolutely awesome!
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We don’t care if we’ve overdone the thanks, we’re going to finish this with more anyway!
Thank you to UKFast for the opportunity and the invites to both the matchday hospitality and the End of Season Awards. As fans of Sale Sharks we feel like the luckiest two people to have been able to attend Saturday’s festivities.
Thank you to the Mr. Jones MBE and the UKFast team for making us so welcome on the day.
Thank you to the Sale Sharks matchday hospitality staff who were just amazing!
Thank you to Sale Sharks for being an awesome club, we’ll be making the journey up as often as we can next season, whether it be full on hospitality or attending as fans. The club, the stadium and the people are just awesome!
Thank you UKFast, Mr Jones and Sale Sharks for the amazing goody bag!
And finally a huge thank you to the players for putting up with our requests for photos throughout the evening. It was too good an opportunity not to and we appreciate you making time for us. We’ll use the word again – just awesome!
