Christmas weekend misery
Saturday 23rd December 2017: Aviva Premiership rugby, Round 11: Newcastle Falcons v Harlequins at Kingston Park, Newcastle: Result: Newcastle 11 (4 league points) Harlequins 10 (one losing bonus point): latest League positions – Newcastle 7th on 28 Points, Harlequins 9th on 25 points.
Today I can only recommend that Rusters keen to know details of this Quins match read the online and/or newspaper reports – I had driven into the countryside to attend a family pre-Christmas lunch, it wasn’t being shown live on television, it would have been impolite of me to try and listen to it via online BBC local radio commentary, added to which I couldn’t be bothered anyway.
Apparently Newcastle were 11-0 up at half-time, after which Mike Brown scored a try and Marcus Smith potted the conversion plus a later penalty to leave Quins one point short of a draw. It’s never easy playing away in the north-east at Kingston Park and this latest defeat leaves Quins languishing in 9th position with only this season’s dismal also-rans Northampton Saints, Worcester Warriors and London Irish below them.
I don’t believe that relegation will become an issue but 2017/2018 has been a uniformly dreadful season for Quins from start to … er … Christmas so far …but also probably its finish. Enough said.
