Thomas has been brought in to give cover in the fly half position because Jeremy Staunton is currently the only fit senior number ten at the club with Andy Dunne suffering a foot injury and Adrian Jarvis still recovering from a serious case of viral meningitis.

Arwel Thomas played for Wales 23 times and was always a talking point in clubhouses across Wales (as is anyone who wears the red 10 shirt). He was battling with Neil Jenkins at the time and was often seen as not being as consistent but he certainly was a lot better with the ball in hand than the ginger kicking master.

He scored 11 tries in his 23 appearances for Wales (12W & 11L) and amassed a total of 211 points (30C & 32P) which goes to show that he has an eye for the try line.

He joins Quins from the Scarlets where he rarely saw first team action having been signed for one year when Stephen Jones headed for Montferrand. When he signed he predicted that he had four good seasons left in him, that to my reckoning meas he should still have about 3 ¹/₃ good seasons left to play, how many of those will be for Quins we will have to wait and see.

It has been made clear that he wasn't happy in Llanelli and he is hoping to make a go of it with Quins. He had a poor game against Northampton in the Heiniken Cup and wasn't seen again in the famous scarlet shirt after that.

Before his move to Llanelli Thomas had signed for the Celtic Warriors before they were disbanded and he was at Pau (Garrick Morgan's current club) before that.

He certainly has big game experience both at international level and in Europe and hopefully this will help him keep a clear head in the vitally important, high pressure games Quins have coming up. He will be under a former Welsh number 10 in the person of backs coach Paul Turner.

I'd like to welcome Arwel to Quins and hope he has a successful and enjoyable time with us.

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