Ah well, there’s always next season …
Saturday 5th September 2020: English Premiership – Round 18 – Harlequins v Bath Rugby at The Stoop, kick-off 2.00pm. Result: Harlequins 27 Bath Rugby 41. Harlequins 0 league points: Bath Rugby 5 league points (1 bonus).
New league positions: Bath Rugby 5th, on 50 points; Harlequins 8th, on 37 points.
Looking forward: Bath Rugby are still in contention to finish in the Top Four (thereby qualifying for the play-offs for the league title). Harlequins are no longer in contention for anything but, provided they do not drop any lower, will be playing European rugby of some sort next season (2020/2021).
For my sins I organised my schedule yesterday – including a sandwich for lunch after my domestic labours and then a preparatory 60-minute nap before the BT Sports live coverage began at 1.30pm – so that I could watch the dying embers of Quins’ quest to make the 2019/2020 Premiership play-offs.
Whilst the newsworthy on-pitch developments were happening elsewhere – England captain Owen Farrell’s sending-off for a reckless high tackle against an 18 year-old academy player in the Saracens game against Wasps, Manu Tuilagi scoring a try for Sale in their 31-40 away victory against his old club Leicester Tigers and league leaders Exeter Chiefs out-lasting Northampton Saints 19-22 even though fielding a second-string team – those actually at the Stoop (and/or watching on television as I was) were left to contemplate the historic crumbs of the occasion.
This was the “test match” for the protocols that Premiership Rugby had devised to ensure crowd safety as and when everyone concerned agreed that rugby sporting stadia could begin the process of allowing fans into elite games.
To that extent – from both what the BT presenters and pundits reported and the live pictures being broadcast from the Stoop – the tentative experiment seemed acceptably successful.
There were approximately 2,700 Quins season ticket holders, selected by ballot earlier in the week, plus about 700 others (players, back-up staff, admin personnel and hangers-on from both clubs), dotted about the stands at suitable socially-distanced intervals in what – if memory serves – is a just-under 16,000 capacity ground.
At least most of the Quins supporters looked marginally more animated that the cardboard-cut out ‘pretend supporters’ that some sports clubs have resorted to stationing around their establishments in recent weeks in an effort to make the players feels ‘at home’.
Not that they had too much to be animated about as regards Quins’ performance yesterday.
For all the joys of their multi-coloured strip, ever since the resumption of ‘last season’ – despite all the media noise they created in advance about being ready and determined to ‘hit the ground running’ in an effort to make the play-offs – Quins, who up until the Covid19 crisis hit had been playing like a ‘bottom half team on the slide’, have simply taken up from where they left off.
The biggest news I gleaned from my two hours in front of the television watching Bath finish off Quins’ season was that a new App devised for the occasion – via which supporters sitting in the stands at the Stoop could order beers on their smartphones which were then brought direct to their seats by bar staff – worked perfectly.
Roll on 2020/2021!
