The Spain wing suffered the injury in the dying seconds of a game won 18-17 by a 71st-minute touchdown by Cardiff replacement Richard Mustoe.

Ripol looks set for a prolonged spell on the sidelines along with Sebastien Bruno and Sean Cox, who both sustained injuries in Wednesday's 28-6 Guinness Premiership defeat at London Irish.

It means Sale will head to France for their Heineken Cup opener against Clermont Auvergne on Saturday on the back of successive defeats and with a growing injury list.

Saint-Andre - who fielded a virtual reserve side against the Blues - said: "I'm very disappointed because we deserved to win.

"For the safety of the players, I couldn't pick guys who played on Wednesday against London Irish. We got back on Thursday at three o'clock in the morning and have got three games in nine days. Now we've lost three players for a few months - Cox, Bruno and Ripol - so it's been a bad four days.

"But I'm proud of the players because we had 12 guys from the academy out there who did well against a lot of quality Cardiff players. We competed well, and in the end of the game we maybe could have won."

Saint-Andre used the match as an opportunity to rest his established players amid the gruelling schedule which saw his side lose their unbeaten start to the season at London Irish.

Both sides claimed a try through Leigh Halfpenny and Rudi Keil respectively in the first half, but Cardiff had the final say when replacement Mustoe crossed in the left corner to ensure Sale had nothing more than a losing bonus point to show for their efforts.

Despite winning, Cardiff head coach Dai Young was scathing of his side's efforts as they struggled to beat Sale's youngsters.

Young said: "It wasn't good enough - we gave away far too many penalties, made far too many mistakes and the only real positive is that we got the win. The boys are very down and disappointed but we've got Leicester and Bath now to play in this competition and we know we need to improve massively.

"We sensed in the warm-up that we were a little bit flat and maybe thought it was going to be easier than it turned out to be. We knew they had their big guns missing but that's sometime more dangerous because Sale had a lot of young and hungry players out there."