Its taken me two full days to calm down enough even to attempt this report. So, where to begin? A description of how the game looked from the South Stand, without a single mention of the central distribution of funds issue....

The game started, as games sometimes do, with not an awful lot to write home about. Four minutes of play with Leeds mostly in possession, but giving away a penalty that was duly kicked, putting the Quins 3-0 ahead. Eight minutes later a similarly innocuous looking penalty, this time given away by the Quins allowed Duncan Hodge to equalise. Leeds started to get a grip, with some pretty good passing around which looked like a score was inevitable - only for a loose prop-connected hand to knock-on and halting the attack.

A couple of missed penalties from Duncan Hodge seemed to set the tone of the game from here on in - Leeds seemed to doubt their own abilities, whilst still making the Quins live on scraps. Scraps were all they really needed however, and a couple of Quins penalties put them ahead, with Duncan Hodge finally getting one of his own to bring the score to 9-6. Leeds looked marginally the better team at this point, but were really nowehere near threatening enough to score. Phil Davies clearly saw the signs weren't good, and brought on Aaron Persico after 26 minutes - dispite a 24 hour flight, little sleep and a drop in ambient temperature of about a billion degrees!

Persico didn't however provide any new ideas, and Leeds continued to dominate territory and posession, without making any forward headway. The last kick of the half gave Duncan Hodge the equalising score, and the teams went in neck-and-neck at 9-9.

Not long after the restart, however, a quick tap penalty sent Phil Christophers over the line for the first (and, alas only) Leeds try. Extras were duly added, and the Leeds fans in the crowd could maybe have been forgiven for thinking this may be one of those high-scoring Leeds comeback halves. Nope!

A rare moment of attack from the Quins, who were equally bereft of the attacking ideas, and an attempted drop-goal from the fly-half was ruled as touched by Liam Botham, so an attacking scrum-five was ordered. Huge gaps in the Leeds defence opened up, and the Quins fly Dunne went over for the score.

Leeds now seemed to panic. Everything they tried was over complicated, poorly executed and just plain wrong. A fumbling knock-on from the Leeds backs was kicked on by a Quins foot, and nobody in the defence had the gas to beat the Quins man Chris Bell, who went in unopposed for another try. The unsporting chaps in the hospitality box, who were flashing their lights on and off as the conversion was taken, were unable to stop the kick going over, and the Quins were 23-16 up.

This signalled a few changes in the Leeds line-up, with Walsh on for Hodge, Halford on for Powell, and Persico on for his second stint of the evening. This didn't stop the silly mistakes and bad options, and only two penalty misses - albeit not easy ones - kept the score down.

Still dominant in possession, but with tiring forwards, Leeds went with one last desparate throw of the dice. With sustained pressure camped in the Quins half, but never a chance of going across the line, they played like a rugby league team on the fifth tackle, tossing the ball around with wild abandon, and the very last move of the match saw Keough intercept a loose pass and race down the line and behind the posts to steal any chance of even a bonus point for Leeds.

Verdict

"Come All Within" - the Harlequins sportnetwork.net website has a regular feature called "Prof's Positives", where the co-editor Prof explores the positive side of the previous week's rugby. I'm glad we don't do this, because I would be hard pushed to write anything at all about this game.

Quins were poor, but held out well to win, and congratulations are due to them for that. Leeds were worse, and thusly deserved to lose. The officials all had very poor games and the atmosphere was almost non-existent given that the crowd barely got over the 3,000 mark (Perhaps the club might think again about how "popular" the Friday night games are. Certainly hosting this game on Halloween night appears to have been a mistake).

Dan Scarbrough showed that he is definitely an out-and-out winger, and not a full-back. Phil Christophers proved he is better as outside centre. Aaron Persico showed that its a long way from Australia, and much colder here! The two fly-halves had one of those games where one was praying for a Scottish loss in the World Cup the following day, so that Gordon Ross can come back to Headingley and play rugby! (Alas, it was not to be, and we have to wait another week for that...).

After the game, Jon Callard was suitably candid, and thanked the crowd for even stopping on for the second half! This just about sums it up for me too, and if there's one thing that would make the rugby league fraternity turn around and say "I told you Rugby Union was rubbish!", then this was the game for that.

There. That's that done. I now have the much happier task of writing about the Cleckheaton U9's victory at Huddersfield YMCA, a match that was played in the cold and wet, but with a degree of skill, passion and commitment that the two pro sides on Friday would do well to try to mirror....

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