Sale Sharks will have a to wait a while longer before seeing flank Hendre Fourie return to action as he struggles to recover from a shoulder injury.

The 32-year-old hurt his shoulder back in February and admitted that his recovery has not gone to according to plan, meaning the eight-cap England international is set to miss the start of the new Aviva Premiership.

"The shoulder is going to take a little bit more time than expected," Fourie told the Rugby Paper.

"It's going to be a while longer before I am back.

"The shoulder gets really irritated when I do heavy weights. A scan showed the bone graft is only 55 percent healed so we're going to offload it for a bit and see if that makes a difference.

"Hopefully it won't be too long before I am back. I do stuff on the field that normal people probably wouldn't do and that is perhaps why my body is so broken."