Mat Protheroe fires back on Twitter after Sale publicly accuse him of diving

Ospreys fullback Mat Protheroe has hit back on Twitter after Sale Sharks publicly accused him of diving during their Heineken Champions Cup clash in Swansea this afternoon.

The Sharks picked up a valuable win on the road, leaving Wales with a 21 - 13 win, but a Tweet about Protheroe in which the club effectively accused him of diving hasn't gone well with Welsh fans.

Three minutes before full time the Ospreys full-back chipped the ball over Sale Sharks' Luke James, who belatedly attempted to charge the kick down.

The pair collided, with the Welshman needing treatment following the incident, although referee Andrea Piardi decided James had nothing to answer for.

Sale Sharks suggested on Twitter that Protheroe was making the most of the incident in order to win a penalty.

They wrote: "Ospreys make a show after Mat Protheroe dives after contact to try and win a penalty.

"Nothing comes and the hosts put the ball into touch 10m from the Sharks line."

Protheroe hit back after the match, quote Tweeting the original Sharks tweet and along with the caption: 'Good story that' with a clown emoji.

It was a game in which Alex Sanderson's side conceded 18 penalties to the Ospreys’ four.

“I thought there were things we could have done better in terms of our performance – the penalty count, playing with 14 men for nearly 20 minutes," said Sanderson. “I thought we did the fundamentals very well in that first 25 minutes. We were clinical in the Ospreys’ 22, which is something we had been working on. We were physical in that area, and we were back to our best defensively.

“We saw all of it in that first half, and we couldn’t seem to get a foothold in the second. It was penalty after penalty that led to another yellow card. That penalty count goes against the trend of winning rugby games, really.”