The scrum-half made a successful return from injury in Monday night’s Premiership Rugby Shield visit of Northampton, coming on from the bench and scoring a try in the 41-15 victory.

Young’s inclusion is the only change to the Falcons side which took a bonus point from last week’s visit of Wasps, Newcastle looking to repeat the one-point victory they achieved away to Sale Sharks during the early part of last season.

Kyle Cooper, David Wilson and Ryan Burrows all come onto the bench after also showing up well for the A-Team on Monday night, director of rugby Dean Richards expecting a physical test against the Sharks.

He said: “The AJ Bell is not an easy place to go and Sale are a good team.

“We’re under absolutely no illusions as to exactly what it will take to win over there. We’ve got to be at our best, and even then it’s going to be a really hard battle.”

Having taken losing bonus points against Exeter Chiefs and Wasps over the past fortnight, Richards added: “Despite all the frustration at narrowly missing out on a couple of close games we feel like we’re playing decent rugby.

“We’re not that far away and it’s just a case of being able to nail these results.

“We didn’t get the victory which we felt we should have done last week, but, having said that, we’ve gone through the game and analysed the areas where we feel we can make the difference on Saturday.

“In a lot of cases it’s just about having that little bit more accuracy, but we’re playing good enough rugby to win these games if we can just make those adjustments.

“We’re certainly creating the opportunities, and perhaps there’s an element of losing a lot of experience from the squad which we had last season. We’ll get that experience as the season goes on, and you have to accept it’s a learning curve for some of our guys which will improve with a little time.”

**Newcastle Falcons team to face Sale Sharks (Saturday, 3pm, AJ Bell Stadium)**

15 Simon Hammersley

14 Vereniki Goneva

13 Chris Harris

12 Johnny Williams

11 Sinoti Sinoti

10 Toby Flood

9 Michael Young

1 Adam Brocklebank

2 George McGuigan

3 Logovi’i Mulipola

4 Calum Green

5 Tevita Cavubati

6 Gary Graham

7 Will Welch (captain)

8 Mark Wilson

**Replacements**

16 Kyle Cooper

17 Sami Mavinga

18 David Wilson

19 Will Witty

20 Ryan Burrows

21 Sonatane Takulua

22 Joel Hodgson

23 Tom Penny

**Sale Sharks**

15 Sam James

14 Byron McGuigan

13 Luke James

12 Rohan Janse van Rensburg

11 Marland Yarde

10 AJ MacGinty

9 Will Cliff

1 Ross Harrison

2 Rob Webber

3 WillGriff John

4 Bryn Evans

5 James Phillips

6 Jono Ross (captain)

7 Tom Curry

8 Josh Strauss

**Replacements**

16 Curtis Langdon

17 Alexandru Tarus

18 Joe Jones

19 Andrei Ostrikov

20 Josh Beaumont

21 Gus Warr

22 Mark Jennings

23 James O’Connor

**Referee:** Tom Foley