Articles by Derek Williams

Bound to happen sometime …

Sunday 31st January: Aviva Premiership Round 10: Kingston Park: Newcastle Falcons 26 Harlequins 19. Deep within the make-up of every sports fan – every true, club-supporting, sports fan – is a ‘glass half empty’, hangdog, fatalistic, resigned and fearful core. Take the situation where you [...]

February 1, 2016 // 0 Comments

Sometimes a fan has to suffer

Friday 22nd January, kick-off 7.45pm: European Challenge Cup pool stage: Result – Montpellier 42 Harlequins 9. This report won’t take long because, when typing words is akin to chipping granite with a blunt knife and fork, brevity becomes a virtue. For the last 36 hours, every waking hour, [...]

January 23, 2016 // 0 Comments

Mine’s a double Jameson’s, Coach …

Now I know something of how fans of David Bowie and Glenn Frey of The Eagles must be feeling – yesterday Conor O’Shea, Harlequins’ Director of Rugby, announced that he’d be leaving his post at the end of the season. He’s being pretty quiet about where he might be going next, but the [...]

January 21, 2016 // 0 Comments

Another game of two halves

The Stoop, Sunday 17th January, kick-off 3.15pm: European Challenge Cup: Harlequins 34 Cardiff Blues 26. The headlines from yesterday’s entertaining encounter are that Quins, despite having yet to play home and away fixtures against Montpelier in Pool 3, have already qualified in first position [...]

January 18, 2016 // 0 Comments

Fingers crossed …

This is the Big One. Round 9 of the Aviva Premiership and we are hosting Saracens at a sold-out Stoop this afternoon. I love the atmosphere that gradually builds up all week before one of these crunch games and, with Sarries the runaway league leaders (unbeaten in all competitions so far this term) [...]

January 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

A job half done

The weather (specifically strong winds and lashing rain) affected most UK sporting fixtures over the weekend and yesterday’s Harlequins 24-20 away victory over Worcester Warriors, taking them above Leicester Tigers to third in the Premiership, was no exception. [As your Quins correspondent, with [...]

January 4, 2016 // 0 Comments

Resuming normal service

Monday 28th December 2015, The Stoop, kick-off 1500 hours: Harlequins ‘A’ 34 London Irish ‘A’ 7. New festive day, Bank Holiday Monday, new Quins rugby game. And after the on and off-pitch excesses of Big Game 8, also some time for reflection. Fans are wonderful specimens and come in various [...]

December 29, 2015 // 0 Comments

You cain’t always git what you want

Monday 21st December: Harlequins ‘A’ 20 Bath United 16. Introduction: (1) an apology: because of my rather tenuous relationship with technical competence, I discovered overnight that I must have inadvertently pressed some unknown button on my bog-standard digital camera. As a result, all the [...]

December 22, 2015 // 0 Comments

Another game of two halves

The Stoop, Saturday 19th December: Harlequins 59 Calvisano 7 (European Challenge Cup). Rugby Calvisano S.R.L. is a professional rugby club hailing from the province of Brescia in Lombary which currently operates in Italy’s National Championship of Excellence and managed to qualify to play in this [...]

December 20, 2015 // 0 Comments

First things first, please …

Never mind the war upon ISIS or the fact of 195 countries signing an accord in Paris regarding action to be taken in respect of climate change in order to avoid the extinction of the human race by the year 2100 AD, there are far more important priorities to be dealt with and I cannot understand why [...]

December 13, 2015 // 0 Comments