HQ: Well Mark, last time we did this you said you wanted to qualify for the Heineken Cup and reach the knockout element of one of the tournaments. Given the unforgettable run in the Heineken Cup and the fact that a 4 try, 5 point win today would guarantee a home draw in the GP playoffs, you must be really happy.

ME: Yes, I suppose. I’ve got this horrible tendency, in the midst of achievement, to worry about the next bit! I remember when we won the Challenge Cup in 2004, we’d finished sixth in the league and qualified for the Heineken Cup – we’d had a very good year. I remember walking around the Madejski with Charles Jillings and Andre thinking ‘I’m really worried about next year.’ It’s a curse, it’s a real curse, I can’t help it!

It goes very quickly, it doesn’t stay with you very long, not with me anyway. Also, the season isn’t finished. We’ve got this afternoon’s game, and hopefully one or two others, I’m not really thinking of it like that.

I suppose if you stepped back, looked at what we said last year and said ‘have we achieved what we set out to achieve?’, then obviously yes, we have.

We came back out of Div 1 and we got into the Heineken Cup. In the second year we got into the Heineken again and we challenged for a playoff spot, but ultimately didn’t achieve it. This year we felt we needed to get into some knock-out games, because all three competitions now have knock-out elements to them.

We did that in the Heineken Cup, although we weren’t able to quite close out the deal against Leinster. Not tempting fate, but it looks as if we will be in the playoffs of the Premiership, hopefully at home. I don’t think we expected that. That wasn’t the target – which was to get into the Top 4, as opposed to the Top 2.

Things change during the season. If you get to the semi at home you start to think “hold on a minute, we could win this!” Home advantage is extremely important in English rugby, increasingly so – it’s becoming more and more like French rugby.

Leicester will finish top of the league table this year, by a game, which is quite comfortable at that level, having won 15 games. Win all your home games and that is a hell ova base. I’m sure somebody like Northampton will say “hold on, we’ve won ten home games this year, we’ve only got to nick a couple away, maybe at the lower clubs and we’ll really be in the mix”.

If we were to do well today, if we were to get a home semi, your mind starts to think ‘two games…..’ It’s a Cup then and anybody can win it!

HQ: How significant, in judging the progress of the team, is it that Quins have been able to mount a successful European campaign, alongside a potentially 14 win, play off season, in the domestic competition?

ME: For the size of squad we’ve got, that’s quite an achievement. I think it’s fair to say that we are still not one of the biggest spending clubs budget wise, although we are much higher up that table than we were. Much higher.

I’d still say if you looked at the depth of our squad compared to say Gloucester, Leicester or even though they have had a poor season, Wasps - who have an inordinate number of experienced international players in a number of positions, our success has come a little bit earlier than we expected.

The margins are so thin. (Take the Heineken Cup) game one away at Llanelli Scarlets. At half time we should have been out of it, if they’d taken their chances. That was probably the best half of rugby anybody has played against us all year. We weren’t in it. Our Heineken campaign could have been over before it started. As it was, we got an away win! Away wins in the Heineken are phenomenally difficult, as was shown when we went to Ulster, but that gave us such a boost. Momentum.

Stade Francais at home. We were gone (until NEv’s drop goal), that would have meant maybe not winning the group, maybe not qualifying for the quarter finals. Such tight margins……

In the league, we dropped a home game early, but we haven’t lost a really silly one. We haven’t gone away to say Bristol and lost. It was close, very, very close; it could easily have gone the wrong way. It didn’t look good at one stage, but we won.

If you had to look at a pivotal game, it was Bath away. When we got down to the last five games, I think wrote this in the programme a couple of times, ‘you have to win your home games’. You cannot slip up at home and we have been very solid. We had some difficult sides to play in the second half of the season at the Stoop. Lose any one of those and it would probably have been just enough to knock you back.

We’ve looked our flattest the week after Heineken Cup games - Franklins Gardens and understandably at Sale.

It has been a pleasing season. We’ve gone on to another level. I think to qualify for the Heineken three years in a row is quite indicative. We have to build ourselves into a club where we have the expectation to qualify every year and if we don’t it’s a cause for real concern. That’s difficult to do. If you look around, there will be some strong sides that will not be in the Heineken next year.

It’s the first hurdle you set yourself every year. Play well enough to get into the Heineken Cup the year after.

HQ: In the last home programme against Leinster, you said in your notes that “The rebuilding process has almost reached its tipping point.” Given the success this season, what else do you feel has to happen?

ME: I still think that our ground is too small. A capacity of 12,600 and an average crowd of 11,900 is still not big enough. Last week Munster got 21,000 for the Connaught game at home. That generates a huge revenue. Leicester are going out to 23,000 next year, the new stadium for Stade Francais that will be on stream in three or four years, we are just not big enough still.

We started out a long way behind them. We’ve passed some sides, but the really, really big players, quite understandably, have made some real moves themselves. So, we’ve still got some way to go in terms of the sheer size of our fan base and our stadium.

I think in terms of England, the tipping point is nearly there in the sense that we will have established ourselves as a regular top six side within the Premiership. That point has nearly been reached, but that was never the vision all those years ago. The vision was not just to be a strong club within an English context, but to be a player within a wider context. I don’t think we can yet say we have reached that point. That will take a few more years.

HQ: The Quins model of ‘build, grow the crowd; build, grow the crowd’ would seem to be approaching the next ‘build’ phase. What are the latest plans for the South Stand?

ME: Ask me after today! Seriously, a home semi is a bit of a cash cow in the sense that you keep most of the receipts. That might just be enough to tip the balance in terms of funding. We’ll have to wait and see.

HQ: Talking in terms of funding, this year debenture holders have been given the chance to buy 5 year season tickets. Are you considering offering multi-year season ticket packages to other season ticket holder categories?

ME: You are pulling revenue forward when you’re doing that.  It is an option, but not one we are going to do this summer. We didn’t think that in the current (economic) climate it was the right time. Leicester have used it to partly fund their expansion. It’s not something we would rule out in the future.

HQ: You have always maintained that to be successful in the long term, an English team needed to own its own stadium, have at least 15,000 seats and fill them on a regular basis. Assuming nothing has happened to make you change that view, does that mean you expect Leicester, Gloucester, Northampton and Quins to dominate the domestic game in future years?

ME: Yeah, I think Worcester are also going to be a very strong club. Their fundamentals are so sound. Any club with a sixty five acre site next to the M5 on their balance sheet, which they can develop/borrow against, has got to be in a very strong position. It will probably take them longer because they have effectively come from an amateur background. They are quite a remarkable story within professional rugby in England.

You always have to accept that there may well be a club, or clubs, who will be so well funded by an owner/patron/fan, whatever you want to call it, who does it for perfectly good reasons – but they aren’t commercial reasons, who will be prepared to put enough money in on a year after year after year basis to enable their team to always be a contender. Although that is becoming a more difficult model to sustain, it still happens.

You’ve got somebody like the guy at Racing, extraordinarily wealthy, probably the wealthiest of all the French owners, who is putting an enormous amount of money into Racing to try and establish them back as the biggest club in Paris.  Very similar to the old Harlequins, very well connected, wonderful tradition, no crowd, no ground, but every now and again enough players would be attracted to join them because it was a prestigious playing club. He may decide that he’s got enough money and he’ll make Racing a real force.

You’ve always got to accept in sport that there may well be people like that and for a time, or maybe a generation, they will be there or thereabouts. If you haven’t got that kind of backer, I think the fundamentals you referred to are what you are going to have to have to be consistently up there.

HQ: These days, it seems impossible to have a conversation about rugby without discussing money! How has the recent credit crunch affected things?

ME: It has had an impact in certain areas; it doesn’t seem to have had an impact yet on the crowds. It will be interesting to see whether it has an impact on season ticket renewal and season ticket growth. Obviously, we are budgeting to grow season ticket numbers again next year. We budget to grow them every year – that’s our model.

It’s had a huge effect on international hospitality. That market has really been hit hard. Somebody like RBS, who would have traditionally taken 800-900 people to an England game, this year took less than 50. I think we would be naïve to think that would not spill over into club rugby.

Sponsorship is the other one people talk about, but at the moment we are pretty strong in that area. A lot of our other revenue streams rely simply on crowd size. Merchandise relies on your fan base; food and beverage relies on getting people through the door. I’ve said many times that this is a ticketing business. That is where the real risk is. If your ticket revenue starts to get eroded, then you’ve got a problem.

HQ: Clearly, this year’s squad had been the strongest and most successful Quins team of any in the professional era. 

ME: I think the 97-98 squad was pretty strong. On paper, that was a very expensively assembled and talented group of players. It never did much, nearly bankrupted the Club, but on paper that was a strong team.

HQ: What changes can fans expect during the summer to the squad?

ME: Not too many. You know I’m not going to say exactly what! I think Dean felt correctly that this year renewing and securing quite a young group of people, a number of whom were coming to the end of their first contract – which is always a difficult time, was the priority. I think he’s managed that really well, outside the public spotlight. We haven’t created much of a song and dance about it. I know that frustrates some of the fans but I think it’s a much more professional and appropriate way for everybody concerned, rather than conduct player recruitment/re-signing/removal in the media.

I’m not going to criticise any of the other clubs but I think it’s fairly obvious that a couple have had their affairs trawled over interminably by the media. You don’t have to do it that way. You do choose that. People blame the media for a lot of things, but actually you can’t control it all the time, but you can control it a fair bit of the time. If you don’t go out and make statements and don’t publish too much in the middle of the season, you don’t make a song and dance when you let people go or when you sign them either, in the end people tend to leave you alone. That’s the way we like it.

HQ: Some people like the spotlight. There isn’t consistency across the league is there?

ME: That’s fine, that’s entirely up to them. They have that right just as we have. Once a player has signed elsewhere, if they’re not being offered a new contract, or choose to take a different offer, which tends to happen between January and April and they have their reasons (for making it public) then that’s entirely fine. On the whole, we tend not to.

It’s not that the player doesn’t know what’s going on, or anything like that. We just tend not to do it. Dean’s appointment has accentuated that. I think it’s fair to say that on the continuum of, on the one hand, DoRs who love talking to the press and seeing their names in the papers and those who don’t, Dean is somewhat closer to the second category!

HQ: Presumably, that’s the same with injuries? I know fans would love to know how players’ injuries are coming along.

ME: Sport’s about very small margins at this level. The analysis and study that goes on into the opposition in the tournaments that you play in is quite extra-ordinary. It’s getting more and more sophisticated every year. People are employed full time, almost, to find slight weaknesses that can be exploited.

Our view is that it doesn’t make any sense at all. Even if it was only one player, with one injury, in one game, in a whole season, we don’t see why we should help or give any kind of information (to our opponents) that they might not otherwise have.

They might find out anyway of course. A lot of it goes through the player network. Players have friends at other clubs, sometimes best mates. Information leaks out, of course it does, but to say we are actually going to put it in the public domain because supporters would like to know, I’m sorry, we just don’t accept that.

We think we are quite an open club, in terms of providing our fans with information about match day, Club developments, the strategies of the Club. We try to explain why certain decisions are made. One of the Club values is to be accessible and honest, but that doesn’t mean we are completely transparent because we are working in a very competitive arena.

HQ: A couple of questions on the laws of the game if I may.  ELVs – What’s your view on them?

ME: I think the impact of the ELVs has been massively over-stated. One of the reasons we had a good start to the year – and all credit to the coaching team, is that they made a very clear statement that they were going to keep playing the same way as last year. They took the view that, after a lot of study, it wasn’t going to make an awful lot of difference.

There were a few teams in the early weeks, with the notable exceptions of Bath, Irish and Quins who got themselves into a complete tiz. I watched some games in the early part of the season which were just extra-ordinary. They were just kicking to each other. It was like watching paint dry.

Taking away the maul has made the game less interesting. Thankfully it’s coming back.

The thing that has changed the game and it’s nothing to do with ELVs, is the refereeing of the technical areas. How you referee the tackle areas decides whether you get a lot of kicking or not. If you want the game to have a lot of running and I’m not saying you do but, if you do, then you have to have a game in which you can create a succession and I do mean succession of quick rucks and a game in which somehow you draw enough defenders into the tackle area.

There are only two ways to do that. Number one, you have to have mauls in the game, because they do it and, secondly, you have to allow the side carrying the ball some leeway in the way they clear out the ruck. If you don’t and you are constantly penalising the side that takes the ball in, then people will kick.

If you don’t get quick rucks you won’t get a lot of handling. A slow ruck is so easy to defend, you can knock people down all day. People who don’t understand say “put it wide”. Actually, if you are a defensive team close to your own line, you want people to stick it wide off a slow ruck, because you’ll probably knock people down somewhere in the 13 channel and turn the ball over.

The way the game has been refereed this year has been too much in the defence’s favour. The number of times someone goes to clear out when their team is carrying the ball, there’s nothing to ruck against, they fall to the ground and the referee says “off your feet”.  Technically, they are right, but in the spirit of what you are trying to create it’s just bonkers.

HQ: Uncontested scrums.  What should we do to eliminate them in professional rugby?

ME: We should go to the French suggestion and say “if you go to uncontested, you go to 14 men”. Simple as that. You can’t say you’ll never have uncontested scrums, because there are genuine safety and liability issues. People who argue for that don’t understand the world we live in, in terms of litigation. If you are unlucky enough, occasionally it’s just luck, but luck is part of sport, or conniving enough to end up with uncontested scrums, you should be playing with 14 men. I feel very strongly about that, otherwise we leave ourselves open to ‘jiggery-pokery’, to coin an old fashioned phrase.

HQ: Time for my annual question on Rugby League and our rugby league cousins. How is that relationship developing? Anything new?

ME: Not really. Great win last night up at Headingley. 21-4 against Leeds Rhinos is probably their best result in Harlequin shirts. Commercially, it’s a long old road. It’s tough, but I’m pretty impressed with the new general manager. He’s a good solid sports pro, knows his stuff.

HQ: Still two separate entities?

ME: Oh yeah. Entirely.

HQ: Looking into your crystal ball for a second, do you envisage any significant changes to the structure of English professional club rugby any time soon? Is a European Super League a real possibility?

ME: I’m on record as saying I think it will end up there. I’m also on record as saying it will take at least five, probably ten years to get there, but I think all the economics are pushing it in that direction.

HQ: Would that replace the Heineken Cup?

ME: Yes.

HQ: Would there still be a domestic competition?

ME: Yes, but it would probably be semi-pro.

HQ: Harlequins, for example, would just be in a Super League?

ME: My aim is that, should a (Super League) happen, I will have helped to position Harlequins so that they would be a participant, rather than an observer, of that particular event.

HQ: Is it your view that it would be good for rugby if that happened?

ME: I’m ambivalent about that if I’m honest. It’s very hard to say. I think there are pros and cons.

HQ: Finally, were you surprised or disappointed that Ugo is our ‘lone Lion’?

ME: I’m surprised we had any if I’m honest! I had reconciled myself that we would have a big representation in the England and England Saxons tours and I think we probably will.

Once Dave Strettle had an injury plagued season and when Danny got injured/the furore over the yellow card thing meant he probably didn’t play enough games in the Six Nations. Interestingly, I think Lions selection is probably too predicated on the five games you play in an international jersey (in the Six Nations).

Ugo just came with a late run and an outstanding game against Scotland at Twickenham. It came at just the right time for him. Timing is everything.

Then, of course, there’s Nick who, I think, suffers from a miss-conception about his ability and his talent. He doesn’t fit the orthodox perception of how a number eight should look or play. He is not flashy. He is not Parisse. He’s not an Andy Powell. I’d always pick Nick ahead of an Andy Powell,  but when (Andy) does something it’s very, very visible. That’s fashionable at the moment. People are very much into ‘hard grounds, South Africa, big explosive forwards’.

HQ: Thanks Mark. See you in the playoffs!

ME: Well, let’s hope so.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

Related Articles:

• Quinssa Summer Party - Saturday June 13th