SALE legend Steve Diamond is being targeted by Russian rugby authorities for a senior coaching role.

The former Sale hooker, who also coached the club along with former team-mate Jim Mallinder before heading to Saracens, is to have talks next week.

He will be meeting up with former Sale chief executive Howard Thomas, who is now an adviser to the Russians.

Thomas left his role at Sale in 1998 to become chief executive of English First Division Rugby.

He has since been taken on in a marketing capacity to help develop the game in Russia and is now turning to one of his former players to help take the game forward in the former Soviet Union.

Diamond, who also coached the England Saxons on tours to USA and Canada with Mallinder, said: "It's very early days.

"It all sounds very interesting. Rugby is a growing sport out there with an increasingly professional approach towards the game."

Thomas has promised to develop a strategy for turning their professional rugby leagues into a money-making venture that would attract potential advertisers.

Ban

Rugby Union started in the Soviet Union in 1923 and has come a long way since the Stalinist dark days when the former dictator banned the game for being 'too bourgeois'.

In 1948, Stalin labelled rugby a hobby for capitalists and introduced a complete ban for almost a decade.

There was a thaw under Krushchev when it was one of the sports played at the International Festival of Youth and Students in 1957.

Since then, the game has grown steadily but has always struggled financially.

The Soviet Union was invited to take part in the first World Cup in 1987 in New Zealand and Australia but was rejected by the Soviet authorities, who refused to let their team travel to the event for political reasons.

When the Union collapsed in 1991, it did not mean a rapid rise of the game in Russia as the domestic league suffered seriously from the departure of strong players from other ex-Soviet states, notably Georgia and Ukraine.

But today's Russian league is developing well and they are now targeting qualification for the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand. Tweet