Harlequins v Northampton Saints.

 Guinness Premiership.  Round 14.  20 February  2010

Result: Harlequins 13, Northampton Saints 6

By Jonathan Stockham from Twickenham Stoop.

Quins, bouncing back after their drubbing at Kingsholm last week, played at speed from the kick off and two early penalties from their pressure were converted accurately by Nick Evans. For the first half hour, Saints were scrambling around in defence and pinned down in their half. Indeed, Quins had a try disallowed on 15 minutes when a defender managed to get under the ball over the line.

From the resulting scrum 5, Quins kept attacking and although Saints were valiant in defending their line but, pulled right and left, the gaps soon opened for Mike Brown to power over from short range for the only try of the game. Evans added the conversion to nudge the scoreboard on to 13-0 which would turn out to be that as far as Quins were concerned for the day. Indeed the score at half time could have been a lot closer if Steve Myler had been on target with, for him, relatively straight forward kicks at goal in the first half. He missed again shortly after the interval before opening Saints scoring with a successful place kick 6 minutes into the second half, followed by another 10 minutes later.

Myler was replaced on the hour by Shane Geraghty but his place kicking was no better, hooking a penalty shot from 25 metres out. In all, 12 points missed from place kicks. Quins winning margin was 7. Do the math, as they say in the Colonies, although, to be fair, Evans missed a couple of pots at goal in the second half for Quins.

As the game drew to a close, Saints managed to get into Quins 22 and threaten the line, but there was to be no late try in injury time this week as Saints knocked on with the line beckoning!

Basically, Quins had done their homework on Saints. Whatever our strengths were, they were countered by the home side.

Chris Ashton was targeted for kicks at him or over him and he lost composure a couple of times, resulting in being yelled at by Ben Foden on one occasion. Foden himself wasn’t the usual counter attacking threat, as Quins closed him down at every opportunity.

Saints scrum was made to look as useful and effective as a chocolate fireguard and Soane Tonga’uhia didn’t really get motoring until the second half. Too many times, the Saints pack went backwards at the set piece and lost one against the head just to rub salt in. Even when we secured clean lineout ball, we seemed unable to get any drive forward.

The home team attacked every ruck as though it was their last although referee JP Doyle seemed a bit lenient with bodies flying in of their feet. Legal or otherwise, Quins wanted to win every ball and knocked Saints backwards in all respects, physically and mentally. Although one of our main ball winners in this area, Roger Wilson, was absent, Neil Best and Phil Dowson should have coped but came second in the competition against a very determined Quins team

The coaches will have a busy week ahead of them to get the team right in the head to face league leaders Tigers at Franklin’s Gardens next Saturday. If Saints can mount the sort of backlash demonstrated by Quins in this match, we could be in for a cracker.

Jim also needs to decide what he wants from his playmaker at fly half. We started with Myler, supposedly the better kicker but for no great return in that department, nor in tactical kicks, with touchfinders gaining little in the way of field position. On the hour, Geraghty replaced him and although the backs started to play with a little more pace, there were few options for attacking rugby and the up and under returned as the only way of making ground. It was obvious, sitting behind the posts, how few gaps there were in the Quins defence. Not easy to find a way through, but kicking ball away, rather than working the defence confronting you left and right to create gaps, is not a winning formula.

A performance by Saints that was not good, not pretty and, hopefully, not to be repeated!

Harlequins: M Brown; D Strettle, G Lowe, J Turner-Hall, T Williams (S Smith 58); N Evans, K Dickson; C Jones, M Cairns (C Brooker 74), J Andress, J Percival, L Stevenson, C Robshaw, W Skinner (C), T Guest. 

Northampton : B Foden; C Ashton, J Clarke (C Mayor 64), J Downey, P Diggin; S Myler (S Geraghty 59), L Dickson; S Tonga’uiha, B Sharman (A Long 64), E Murray (B Mujati 59), I Fernandez-Lobbe (M Easter 55), J Kruger, C Lawes (S Gray 79), N Best, P Dowson (C). 

Referee: JP Doyle

Pictures from the match can be found here

As a footnote to my report:

Considering how much we were outplayed by Quins for most of the match on Saturday, to leave with a losing bonus point having prevented the home side from scoring for nearly three quarters of the game says a lot about our resilience and never say die attitude. Indeed, we came close to drawing the match in the last couple of minutes.

As Jim said in interviews, we were poor but Quins, for all their determination, weren't much better, given the final score line.

Every so often, a reality check such as this brings us up short and makes us realise what we still need to do to become first class. None of this will have escaped Jim and the coaching team as we head towards the second leg of the East Midlands Premiership Derby match on Saturday evening.

And for all that, we are second in the league this morning, behind Tigers but with a game in hand. So let's focus on our strengths, our game plan, work hard at eliminating the mistakes and be determined not to let the opposition impose their game plan on us.

Quins spoke about "intensity" after the game on Saturday. We need some of that and more for the visit of Tigers.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

Related Articles:

• News: GP: Harlequins v Northampton Saints - Match Preview
• News: Saints (25) Clip Falcons' (13) Wings
• Pictures from the Harlequins - Saints match 20-2-10