although the finishing and skills shown may have left some room for improvement!

I was feeling good about this game. Wasps had a shed load of folk away at the World Cup while we were only missing Nick Easter and Andy Gomarsall. Strettle was starting for the first time since picking up his injury in training at the RWC. The Quins Head saw the return of real ale (real real ale that is!) to the Stoop. Someone had adjusted the beer price setting from “rip off” to “reasonable”, we had some new flags for the kids to wave as the teams came out, Harley had an airplane to wear as part of our sponsorship deal. The only bizarre note was the man who wasn’t Mad Max reading out the teams with all the enthusiasm of an old British Rail announcer detailing the arrival of the 8:15 from Reading!

Anyway, all seemed to be going swimmingly initially – 4 minutes in saw a great try by Tosh Masson courtesy of a neat “heads up” kick from Chris Malone. Malone potted the conversion and there we were 7-0 up against Wasps. Chris Malone was nearly a hero again a few minutes later when he just failed to find Ugo Monye with a great kick to the left wing.

Then of course it was hero to zero! Malone fooled everyone by switching the ball right to poor Chris Robshaw who wasn’t expecting it, Reddan gleefully intercepted and ran the 50 odd metres to touch down. Fortunately Wasps missed the conversion. The ball just missed the left hand post. Harlequins 7 Wasps 5.

There was a bit of tooing and froing after the resultant restart. The Lexus crowd spotted some foul play to which the touch judge was blissfully unaware, and shortly after that Ceri was replaced by Mike Ross as a blood replacement. We got a penalty which Chris Malone duly slotted and were looking good at 10-5 up. On the 20 minute mark Riki Flutey landed an excellent drop goal which needed some legs to get over. So Harlequins 10 – Wasps 8. It was starting to look worrying!

After the restart Ugo Monye demonstrated a kicking skill we were unaware of, with an inch perfect kick some 60 metres at least to get us out our 22 and into theirs. Then came the controversial sin binning of Danny Care. It looked like clever gamesmanship on Wasps part, deliberately engineering it so it looked like Danny interfered with a quick tap penalty. Whatever, it resulted in 10 minutes in the bin for Danny, who came off looking disgusted and bemused. Wasps took their advantage by moving the ball out wide, Waters ran past the Harlequins defence, and ran 40 metres to the line. This was duly converted and we were looking at 10-15, against the run of play surely.

A few minutes after the restart, Malone dropped a very nice goal (it was a penalty anyway) and Harlequins were 13-15 down, so still everything to play for without Wasps having done too much. 5 minutes from half time David Strettle made a try saving tackle with Wasps moving the ball with men over, so the score remained Harlequins 13 – Wasps 15.

It remained a tense affair in the second half. We missed a penalty on the 5 minute mark. A few minutes after that Dean Richards (the referee) was the only person in the stadium who didn’t see a high tackle. Fortunately he saw something else and we got a penalty anyway. Malone slotted it and we were 16-15 up!

It didn’t last, a few minutes later Fraser Waters waltzed through some desperate defence after we were slow to react to Wasps moving their backs from one side of the pack to the other, the conversion was good and we were down 16-22.

Then Reddan got a yellow card for taking the man without the ball waiting to receive a high ball, Malone kicked it and we were back in the game 19-22.

A few minutes later the ref misses an obvious Wasps offside, gives a penalty against us for not rolling away in a nano-second and things are looking worrying again as Cipriani slots it to make the scores 19-25.

Tosh and Huff are off and Tom Guest and JTH come on. All get a good reception from the crowd.

We then had a chance at a penalty for three points, went for the line out and from the resultant drives produced a huge surge for Tom Guest to score but Dean Richards gave us a penalty try anyway. Score 26-25 and now it was getting nervy! There were still just less than 15 minutes to go. There’s a lot of midfield play and long kicking now.

In the 33^rd minute Cipriani misses a long pot at goal from a penalty. A few minutes later Malone does the same. From the resultant 22 Wasps mess it up and we’re back putting pressure on them. Penalty in front of the posts! Chris Malone can’t miss this – but he does. Noooooooooooooooo!

Wasps then produce their best rugby of the game. With the clock running down and Quins unable to get their hands on the ball, they move it from deep in their own 22 to near the Harlequins 22. Dave Walder tried a long range drop goal only to see it drift just wide of the posts, the whistle went and whew! We’d won, but how close was that?

I’d just like to point out that Chris Malone scored 16 points (3 penalties, two conversions and a drop goal) as well as making the try for Tosh Masson.

At the media discussion afterwards, Dean Richards was up first.

He said he wasn’t very happy with the performance; we’d taken one out of three opportunities in the opening minutes. We gifted them two tries and missed wrapping round in defence for the third.

He was pretty relaxed about Malone’s kicking. He said it was a blip but Malone was one of the most consistent players in the premiership.

Someone asked him about the referee. The first point he made was he hadn’t really twigged the ref had the same name, so when someone in the stands shouted “Dean Richards you’re a wonker!” he’d been slightly confused what he’d done wrong. He admitted to having some discussions with the 4^th official over DC’s yellow card, which he said was a harsh decision. He was careful to add that he thought the referee “had a good game”.

All you want from a referee is consistency, but someone said the referee changed as he went on. Then obviously someone spoke to him at half time, but he changed as the game went on. That’s why Chris White is such a good ref!

He said there was no outstanding player from that match. Stretts and Ceri both played well.

Ian McGeechan and Shaun Edwards were next. Ian said the last minute showed what they could do. After the first 30 minutes he was amazed Wasps were still in the game.

Shaun Edwards said he thought the scramble defence had been fantastic, but their discipline let them down in the second half, the sin binning didn’t help. He said the difference between success and failure was very small.

And yes it was! By a single point we won the game and moved third in the table!

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