The match was fairly meaningless to Quins who needed a winand at least 11 tries to progress further in this competition followingCardiff’s demolition of Scarlets on the previous day.  To the visitors, however, a bonus point win would take thento the semi-finals.  It is to theircredit that they achieved the result they came to get.   While both teams were affected byinternational calls and injuries, Gloucester had their most experienced playerson the bench and were able to substitute from strength.  Quins had 21 players missing throughillness, injury and international calls.

Quins started the match at pace and after five minutesGloucester were caught offside in front of their posts for Evans to open thescoring with a simple penalty kick. From the next penalty Evans opted to kick for touch and from the lineoutCairns, looping round the tail of the lineout, was stopped inches short of theline but the forwards drove over for James Percival to score.  Evans added the conversion for a 10 –0  lead.

It was Evans that increased the score a couple of minuteslater as having found touch in the visitors’ twenty-two from another penalty,the fly-half rounded the resulting maul beating two defenders for a fineindividual try.  His conversionattempt hit the post and rebounded. After twelve minutes Quins led 15 – 0.

Then problems mounted for the visitors as a few minuteslater, after various warnings from the referee, his patience was at an end anda yellow card for Dawidiuk, removed the hooker to the sin.  Quins failed to capitaliseimmediately.  For the resultingpenalty they called a scrum as they did for the free kick that followed andthen lost the ball allowing Gloucester to clear and the chance of another tryor three points went begging.

A penalty to Gloucester kicked for touch was well wide ofthe mark and was kicked dead.  Fromthe scrum back on half way Tom Guest broke from the base of the scrum and aftercrossing the gain line found Dickson in support. The scrum half acceleratedaway and found Nick Evans to his left and he finished the move with his secondtry of the afternoon, but again failed with the conversion.

The visitors regrouped as they returned to full strength andtheir determined efforts produced two tries in the last ten minutes of thehalf, due as much to poor defensive work and missed tackles, as first JamesSimpson-Daniel and then the fly half, Taylor crossed for soft tries both ofwhich Taylor converted to bring the score at half time to 20 –14. 

Quins gave a debut to their new Argentinian lock, TomasVallejos, but it took just seven minutes for him to incur the wrath of thereferee and collect a yellow card. When he eventually returned he performedwell enough at the lineout to be reckoned as a good acquisition.  Meanwhile penalty opportunities thatcame Harlequins way were no longer being kicked for the corners in a search fortries.  Instead Evans was going forgoal and landing two out of three attempts in the first twenty minutes of thehalf.

Then the Gloucester fight back began as the heavyweightsubstitutes began to appear.  Voycebroke down the right and though well tackled and stopped by Mike Brown was ableto put the ball up for Simpson-Daniel to score in the corner.  The conversion attempt failed but thegap was narrowed to 26 – 19.  Evansincreased the gap with another penalty with eleven minutes remaining.

That Gloucester were permitted by the Quins defence to scoretwo tries in the space of the five final minutes of the match was both inexcusable andincomprehensible, but they did. The final kick of the match was the conversion of the second of thosetries that snatched the victory.

After the match, a severely disappointed John Kingston did not seek to makeexcuses for the team. He said: "We lost the iron grip we had on the gamejust before half-time with the two soft tries. It's desperately disappointingto lose a match we had dominated in most aspects for most of the game. There'svery little consolation in the fact that outcome-wise it was fairly meaninglessto us."

Explaining that he had 21 players unavailable for selectiondue to international calls, injury and illness, he indicated that he hoped tohave Strettle and Robshaw back from the Saxons and Skinner and Tom Williamsfrom injury and Tiesi who had been a late withdrawal due to illness.

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