Articles by Derek Williams

Saturday 3rd September 2016: London Double Header at Twickenham Stadium. Harlequins 21 Bristol Rugby 19. Harlequins 4 Premiership points: Bristol Rugby 1 (losing bonus point). As regular readers will be aware, for the past eight years I have refused – both as a matter of principle and out of [...]

Any Rust reader who has ever been a long-term sporting club supporter will find familiar my current state of combined anguish, dread and hope as the Harlequins enter their last few weeks of pre-season prior to the launch of the 2016/2017 Aviva Premiership season on 3rd September. I shan’t bother [...]

Little in this life is more calculated to forcibly remind a human being of the swiftness at which time slips away than sitting down, fondly recalling something memorable from one’s past and simply working out just how long ago it occurred. In days of yore (at the dawn of the professional era in [...]

Saturday 7th May 2016: Aviva Premiership Round 22: Harlequins v Exeter Chiefs at the Stoop, kick-off 1330 hours: Result – Harlequins 24 (0 league points) Exeter Chiefs 62 (5 point bonus-try win). Harlequins 3 tries (Care, Stanley and Sinkler), three conversions (Evans 1, Botica 2) and one penalty [...]

Sunday 1st April 2016: Madejski Stadium: Aviva Premiership Round 21: London Irish 25 Harlequins 32: Respective latest league positions – Harlequins 6th on 55 points, London Irish 12th on 20 points (relegated into the Championship). I did not watch this Harlequins away match because firstly, I [...]

Friday 22nd April 2016: European Challenge Cup semi-final: Harlequins v Grenoble at the Stoop; result – Harlequins 30 Grenoble 6. “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone …” (or whatever it was that W.H. Auden wrote in his Funeral Blues poem that was recited by actor John Hannah at a [...]