The Rising
Saturday 24th January 2016: Aviva Premiership Round 4. Harlequins v Saracens at the Stoop, kick-off 3.00pm. Result: Quins 17 (4 league points), Saracens 10 (1 losing bonus point).
It is a fact that, from every spectator’s viewpoint, all sporting events – great or small – spring from the wider context of their own lives leading up to their arrival at the venue.
In my case, I had been somewhat under the cosh. My son, who has lived abroad for twelve years and rarely visits the UK, had been staying with me all week and was scheduled to fly home from Stansted Airport in order to deal with urgent business matters – as it happens, he’ll be back next week to attend the funeral of his great-aunt who passed away whilst he was here – and naturally yours truly had been happy to respond to a request that I act as his chauffeur.
I’ll cut to the chase. What the above meant was me undertaking a round trip of four and a quarter hours to drive the 61 miles to Stansted and back – 1 hour 25 minutes to deliver said offspring to the ‘express drop-off’ point outside the terminal and the remainder, thanks to the extraordinary traffic in the vicinity of London, in getting back home before then setting off to the Stoop which eventually (due to the same issue) involved me abandoning my car and undertaking a one and a half mile route march to the ground, arriving just four minutes before the players ran out onto the pitch.
Dear reader, by this time I was lathered up, worn out and significantly more desirous of having one of my habitual half-hour day-naps than watching what was expected by most people in the sold-out Stoop – not least we long-suffering and thoroughly disgruntled home supporters bedecked in humorous gallows banter – to be a bit of a beating-up and then a twenty-point-plus victory for our visitors, the reigning Aviva Premiership champions.
But let’s get to the matter at hand:
Although I’m a strident and opinionated fellow who never holds back in analysing my own team’s travails and failings, I’m also humble and honest enough to hold my hand up and salute a great Quins team effort when I see one and/or admit that I was wrong.
That said, this morning, replaying in my mind the events of yesterday afternoon, I’m still struggling to collect my thoughts upon Quins’ 17-10 win.
Come what may, I shall remain concerned about the lack of player investment during the summer and the appointments of John Kingston as director of rugby, Mark Mapletoft as head coach and Nick Easter (to look after defence) for the duration of this season. Sadly, none of the above fill me with the confidence for the 2016/2017 campaign that I (and indeed most Quins fans) would have liked.
Nevertheless somehow yesterday – and it came out of the blue – the boys in their resplendent specially-designed ‘150th anniversary’ kit came out of the blocks with serious intent and produced a performance to warm the cockles of even this pessimist’s heart.
Was it redemption-time? To be truthful, it is too early to tell.
Has it turned around our season [prior to this game, after three rounds we were languishing in 10th place in the league out of 12]? Ditto.
Another point worth mentioning is that currently Quins are suffering from an extreme surfeit of niggly injuries – made worse this week by the news that our rising England flanker Jack Clifford (hurt in last week’s losing Exeter Chiefs game) had his ankle operated upon this week and in consequence will be out for another ten. There is barely a position on the field in which we do not have someone on the physio’s table or worse, which means that some of our match day squads have been decidedly of the ‘make do and mend’ variety.
Such it was yesterday. At fly half, in the absence of Nick Evans, we had callow South African Tim Swiel playing his second game in succession. I’ve been a quiet fan of Swiel’s ever since he arrived a season and a half ago, originally on a three months’ loan. He’s got a rugby brain on him and has always shown little touches of class. He’s also obviously been working during the summer on his place-kicking because it was outstanding in this game.
It became, inevitably, a match of two halves. Quins went in at the break two tries and 17-0 to the good. Having suffered another worrying injury – Joe Marler, kayoed in sickening fashion in trying to tackle Mako Vunipola in the first minute of the match, was immediately permanently substituted the moment he ‘came to’ (fortunately at the end of the match he was up and about shaking hands etc.) – we suddenly began playing, possibly in desperation at the task ahead, in the all-out Quins way, like we used to four or five years ago.
A lot was going to depend, as it always does, upon how well (if at all) Quins fronted up to the vast and fearsome Sarries pack. A lot of teams surrender straight away, or alternatively eventually succumb to sustained pressure. In this match Quins’ piano-shifters gave as good as they got – i.e. everything – and after a shaky start, as Saracens laid siege to the Quins’ line for over ten minutes in scrum after scrum as the seconds to half-time ticked away, they did a magnificent, sustained and probably even match-winning defensive job there and then, to somehow hold out to the interval.
The second half was a relentless slog in which some of our heavyweights – Chris Robshaw and Jamie Roberts to the fore – stood out. Annoyingly, in the third minute of it Ellery, the visitors’ right wing threequarter, made an outstanding break towards the A316 end which was finished off with a converted try by Richard Wigglesworth. Some of we moaners immediately sensed the worst and a long disappointing afternoon. But thereafter the contest developed into a full-on, no quarter asked or given, scrap with the Stoop – at last and for the first time this season – rising to the occasion with our rousing chants spontaneously rippling around the ground in a non-stop crescendo. It was an ‘old school’ atmosphere to make the sap rise even in someone of my vintage.
At the end, few present were in doubt about the significance of the result. The players were ecstatic, but no more so than the home supporters. It felt as if we had just won a Premiership play-off semi-final. We hadn’t, of course. We’d just held on – albeit may I add deservedly so – to nick the victory.
One swallow does not a summer make. Especially not when next weekend’s match is away at Coventry against Premiership leaders Wasps in October.