Articles by Derek Williams

I’m well-known as a rugby fan and over the past few months I have been asked innumerable times by a wide variety of folk how many Rugby World Cup matches I am going to, who is going to win the William Webb Ellis trophy … and so on. The answer is that I have deliberately bought no tickets and am [...]

This, my last blog post of the 2014/2015 season, follows Quins’ 26-27 defeat to Bath last Friday night at the Stoop – a slightly atypical loss amongst our many this term in that it followed an exciting ding-dong battle in which the lead changed six times and the outcome could have gone either [...]

Yesterday afternoon the Harlequins beat Gloucester 29-26 at the Stoop in the Premiership and now lie in 8th place (on 43 points) behind Sale Sharks in 7th (on 47), who play London Irish away this afternoon, and Wasps in 6th (48 points). Therefore there is still a mathematical chance of Quins [...]

Every fan of team sports is allowed to have two favourite teams – the one they actually love and follow and the one they love to hate. As a Harlequins supporter, the team in my latter category – the one whose every characteristic I despise; the one with the capacity to annoy me more than [...]

This has been a hard, gruelling season for Harlequins – I’m talking for the fans, never mind the players – and there’s still no end to the nightmare. Yesterday I strapped myself in for the ordeal of watching live on BT Sport as we racked up our twelfth consecutive Premiership loss to [...]

  Today I wish to offer a small salute to Ugo Monye who has just announced that he would be retiring from rugby at the end of the season after thirteen years as a one-club Harlequins man. Let’s get the stats out of the way first. He has his 32nd birthday coming up on 13th April. Having made [...]

  In prospect I viewed the contrived denouement of the final round of the 2015 Six Nations on Saturday afternoon with mix of trepidation and nostalgia for the old days, i.e. when men were men and the Northern Hemisphere’s premier national tournament was what it was and not a rugby vehicle [...]