Against all odds – but that’s sport I suppose

Sunday 5^th November: Anglo-Welsh Cup 2017/2018: Pool 2 (Exeter Chiefs, Harlequins, Sale Sharks, Dragons); Round 1: Saracens v Harlequins at Allianz Park, kick-off 3.00pm: Result – Saracens 29, Harlequins 30. Harlequins now second in Pool 2, behind Exeter Chiefs, on 5 points (4 for a win and 1 bonus point for four tries).

Firstly, Rust readers need to know that the Anglo-Welsh Cup is a secondary competition – roughly on a par in terms of importance with the English Premiership’s A League (as and when it gets played) in that it tends to feature the dross of Premiership clubs’ playing squads.

Actually, that’s a little unfair.

What I mean to say is that it’s an opportunity for game time in a first team shirt for those guys not being chosen regularly for Premiership matchday 23s; those first teamers who, although picked for recent matchday 23s, didn’t get on the pitch for more than about ten minutes, if at all; for those first-teamers who have been injured and are gradually making their way back to full fitness; for average squad players who need an outing but don’t have any opportunities elsewhere to play; for kids from the academy being given a chance to be seen on the same pitch as the big boys; and (occasionally) for guest players from local Championship [Second Division in old money] clubs and/or other wannabees whose agents have persuaded a Premiership club to give them a trial.

Secondly, Rusters should be aware that the Anglo-Welsh Cup is another of those competitions for which rugby union manages to concoct itself complicated and rubbish playing structures/rules.

In this particular case, for example, in the Pool stage of the Anglo-Welsh Cup none of the teams in any of the Pools actually play each other. Instead they play teams in other Pools … and then amass points by which to measure themselves against teams in their own Pool!

Crazy, isn’t it? (However, as fans, it’s a case of ours not to reason why, etc. …).

Anyway.

I sat down to watch this game live on television (BT Sports 2) with a cup of tea yesterday – as a Quins supporter – expecting not a great deal of joy.

Like most Prem clubs, we’re currently suffering from a heavy injury list through a combination of a ludicrously-crowded playing schedule and sheer bad luck, featuring as a headline half a dozen first team players with long-term injuries (several months each before they are expected to get back to playing at all).

It’s not just Quins under this handicap – most clubs, to be fair Saracens among them, are in a similar position.

That said, of course, Sarries – who through a combination of astute commercial dealings; the fact that plenty of good and ambitious players want to play for a winning, not to say to dominant, club with a healthy chance of winning loads of silverware every season; and lastly (some allege) murky salary-cap-busting (bending-the-rules) skulduggery have amassed the best playing squad in the English Premiership by a country mile – were the odds-on favourites to walk this match by a 20 to 25 point margin.

This was your reporter’s considered view, certainly.

It left me encamped in front of my 47” widescreen out of obligation to this esteemed organ and – before the fifteen minute build-up began – a degree of idle curiosity at the opportunity to see both the Chisholm brothers playing for the first time in ages after separate long-term serious injuries (the older, Ross, at full-back and the younger, James, at Number 8 and captain) and also some of the Quins academy kids whose job it would be to would be act as cannon fodder for the massive and much-vaunted Sarries outfit.

Sadly, practically the first thing the giant (6 feet 10) Martin Bayfield did, after welcoming viewers to the broadcast, was to inform us that there had been seven changes to the Quins match 23.

Both Chisholms were out … as were tighthead prop Phil Swainston and flying winger Charlie Walker … to knocks and/or late fitness test fails. Scottish international Tim Visser had been hauled back from holiday in Dubai to play at full back and more first-teamers and academy babes had been drafted in.

[Make that predicted winning margin for Sarries 35 to 40 points (rather than 20 to 25).]

There was a brilliant early try – the first of the match – from Quins, which started with young fly-half/centre James Lang making a half-break inside the Sarries 22 and off-loading in the tackle to Harry Sloan, our outsize sometime England Under-20 centre. Sloan, 23, who has been out injured for the best part of a season and a half and was making his first team comeback, still had plenty to do, but he crashed through a tackle and a half to reach out for the touchdown.

Otherwise the first 65 minutes of the game went entirely according to the script, with the home team playing with confident control – totally on top at scrum-time and having about 65% of the possession. Quins tried to play here and there but were basically consigned to defending from pillar to post.

By then the score was 26-5 to Sarries.

And then suddenly something happened. Okay, there was a flurry of substitutions on both sides, which may have had something to do with disrupting Saracens’ concentration, but this could so easily also have had a similar effect upon Quins. Everyone – including me – was anticipating nothing more than a somewhat tame last fifteen minutes and a resounding Saracens victory.

In the event, however … not.

Quins gradually began throwing caution to the winds. Both forwards and backs began playing with verve and dynamism hitherto absent. They began crashing through, making yards at a time. The pill was suddenly being thrown about with abandon … and some of the moves were coming off!

Further tries from Alofa Alofa, Elia Elia followed and (in the fourth minute of overtime, some 27 phases into a period of Quins continually-recycled possession that had begun inside their own 22 with less than 30 seconds to full-time) eventually the burrowing-under-a-pile-of-bodies substitute prop Josh Ibuanokpe gave James Lang the chance to pot a conversion to win the match by 30 points to 29.

He managed it.

I’ve been so used to crafting dog-in-the-manager “All is Doom!” pieces on Quins over the last two years that I can barely tap out these words …

This was a weird but heart-warming performance by the men in quartered-colours. I take my hat off to them all – and would be prepared to eat the offending article if this sort of thing were to continue!