It looks like Brexit for Quins
Sunday 22nd October 2017: European Rugby Champions Cup 2017/2018: Pool 1 (Ulster, La Rochelle, Wasps, Harlequins): Round 2 match – Wasps v Harlequins at the Ricoh Stadium, kick off 5.30pm: Result – Wasps 41 Harlequins 10.
During the week I met up with some long-suffering Quins pals and others down the pub in the foolhardy vain hope that a problem shared would be a problem halved (mind you, this may be a condition unique to sports fans).
If I thought I was concerned about the state of the club, I was positively Zen-like compared to the frustration and anger of my companions. ‘Heads must roll’ was their starting point, not a stark conclusion reached after a couple of hours of collective ranting and a skinful of Old Peculiar in our cosy corner of the lounge bar.
As I settled in last night to watch the game live on BT Sport – after a long journey back from the coast featuring two major hold-ups for traffic problems – the advance omens were worryingly poor.
Going through the team sheets during the preview, Irish (double glazing window salesman) anchor presenter Craig Doyle revealed that our England winger Marland Yarde had been dropped for a breach of discipline and replaced by the popular but slight Charlie Walker.
Yarde is a Quins player who epitomises some of our problems.
I first saw him playing in the centre alongside Elliott Daly for Whitfgift School in the final of the Daily Mail Schools competition at Twickenham Stadium in about 2010.
The pair of them were already England age-group stars tipped to reach the very top and to be honest Yarde, a smooth runner who seemed to score tries for fun, looked the greater prospect of the two – the nearest thing to ‘the next Jeremy Guscott’ I’d ever set eyes upon (as I kept telling everyone).
Meanwhile Yarde played for London Irish before arriving at Quins and played brilliantly when he was first picked for England.
However, since then he has drifted out of international favour and has never really found his feet at the Stoop despite the all-round expectation that his many talents would fit perfectly with our ‘throw the ball about’ style of attacking play.
Don’t get me wrong, he could never be criticised for lack of effort or willingness to get involved in the action but he just hasn’t – as they say in horse racing – ‘trained on’ (certainly to Daly’s level) and doesn’t seem much of a team player. He’s always being quoted in the media about how he’s knuckling down, trying to do well at Quins in order to catch Eddie Jones’ eye and get back in contention for his England place, but my impression is that in fact it’s all about him, not the club.
Yesterday’s edition of The Rugby Paper ran a piece that Yarde, who’ll be out of contract at the end of the season, is being ‘watched’ by several Premiership clubs as well as French Top 14 ones as his talks with Quins continue, but – if you’re as cynical as I am – this could just be a bit of hot air designed to improve the strength of his agent’s negotiating position. Most Quins fans I know would be indifferent if he were to move on.
The biggest collective gripes from our pub Brains Trust group is that (injuries aside, and these are affecting us badly) the Quins pack is just not big or ugly enough to beat up their opposite numbers and/or gain supremacy at the breakdown and that a pattern has emerged of us having the lions’ share of possession and pressure in games but just not being able to convert these into points when we get into the red zone.
Which brings me to our piss-poor performance last night in a match that both sides needed to win in order to remain in the mix for going any further in Europe’s premier knock-out cup competition.
Both our pub group’s main criticisms were to the fore.
With the benefit of home advantage Wasps were really up for the battle and they bossed the breakdowns by a wide margin.
Their England Number 8 Nathan Hughes was a dominant force, brushing off man after man as he rampaged round the park, whilst yet again the self-discipline of our England props let us down.
The combative Kyle Sinckler, who’s been playing like a head case recently, was thankfully unavailable or not picked for this one, but Joe Marler – who got into a major scrap with James Haskell when we beat Wasps at the Ricoh a few weeks back – was doing his best to make up for his absence. And duly got yellow carded for a forearm smash on a Wasps forward to fully justify his ‘pantomime villain’ reputation as far as the home fans were concerned.
Quins were 18 points down at half-time after having had nearly 70% of the possession, which just about sums it up. Things didn’t improve in the second half. This defeat effectively marks the end of our interest in Europe for this season and, if Quins continue to play like this, probably the demise of any hopes of Premiership title contention as well.
Never mind, perhaps Quins fans should look on the bright side. We’ve always got the potential excitement to look forward to of getting involved in, and then hopefully surviving, the annual struggle of the lower-ranked Premiership clubs to avoid relegation …
