Articles by Derek Williams

Saturday 5th December 2015 – The Stoop – Harlequins 38 London Irish 7. Make no mistake about it, this was a Grade A Premiership rout played out in front of RFU CEO Ian Ritchie and new England head coach Eddie Jones sitting in the stands. The Australian will have liked what he saw as regards the [...]

European Challenge Cup (Thursday 19th November, kick-off 7.45pm) – Cardiff Blues 20 Harlequins 32 – at Cardiff Arms Park The journey from London to the centre of Cardiff – whether by rail or road – is a bit of an ordeal at the best of times and thankfully, committed to being elsewhere [...]

First things first. Last night I went down to the Stoop by car for Quins’ European Challenge Cup opening match against Montpellier (whose director of rugby is Jake White, the bookies’ current favourite to be the next England head coach) and managed to find somewhere to park off Twickenham Green [...]

Earlier this week I reported upon Sunday’s Quins away game at Leicester Tigers (a 19-22 loss), which I watched ‘live’ on BT Sport, and therefore must half-apologise to Rust readers for returning to the subject and indeed sundry other matters. I do so as a result of reading Monday’s quality [...]

The record will show that yesterday that Quins lost 19-22 to Leicester Tigers at Welford Road, gaining a losing bonus point and as a result now sitting at 6th in the Premiership league table. There’s a theory abroad that – broadly speaking – winning your home games and picking up the odd [...]

And so to the Stoop for Harlequins’ first match of the 2015/2016 Aviva Premiership season, against Wasps. In days gone by this would have been one of the keenest London derby matches but – with London Irish down in Reading, Saracens now at Allianz Park and ‘London Wasps’ having moved from [...]

Being a one-eyed Quins supporter who hates Twickenham Stadium as a venue with a vengeance, I deliberately bought no tickets for the Rugby World Cup on the basis that I would far prefer to watch the unfolding tournament – or such of it as was attractive to me – on the television, free from the [...]

With the start of rugby’s Premiership season delayed because of the Rugby World Cup, yesterday I donned my Harlequins onesie in order to watch on television the All Black’s opening match against Argentina at Wembley in front of a new RWC record crowd of 89,000. The Kiwis duly won the match [...]