London Irish head coach Toby Booth and Sale Executive Director of Sport Steve Diamond had unsurprisingly differing views of a late penalty issued by referee Wayne Barnes.

The penalty earned the Exiles a 21-19 win at in their Premiership outing the Madejski Stadium.

Sale were penalised in the final two minutes for a scrum offence when leading 19-18. Irish flyhalf Adrian Jarvis, who had kicked an earlier penalty, stepped up and landed his second shot at goal, denying the Sharks victory.

The match had been close throughout the 80 minutes, with Sale's early 10-point lead courtesy of Rob Miller's converted try and Nick Macleod's penalty, wiped out by the break.

Macleod finished the game with four penalties to his name, while flank Bryn Evans and wing Topsy Ojo went over for tries and rising star Tom Homer booted a penalty and conversion.

Diamond, though, felt his side should not have penalised at the crucial scrum.

The Sharks' Executive Director of Sport said: "I'm not whinging but if the referee is going to make his interpretations, let it be consistent. That's what we are after. He has to be 100 percent right.

"The hardest thing as a coach is we didn't play to our full potential and the responsibility is on the coaches, players and ourselves. But, within three minutes [at the end], we could have and should have won the game."

Irish head coach Toby Booth, meanwhile, called the scrum incident at the end a "stonewall" decision, saying that referee Wayne Barnes was correct.

And Booth was happy that Irish had laid to rest a horrible beating at Bath's Recreation Ground last weekend by winning this one.

"If we had been more clinical, we could have made it more comfortable," said Booth.

"That's what pressure does and that is what an injury list does. By the first 10 minutes, we were a bit tentative, and you have to give Sale credit for that.

"But we could have been considerably in front by half-time, if we had been more clinical. But I'm not going to shy away from the fact that the victory was very important from what we produced last week.

"The quality of your group is by how you respond in adversity and I thought they were absolutely outstanding in effort and intensity. We were good for it."