By The Prof
December 13 2002

Well it wasn’t the most successful weekend of rugby that Harlequins have ever had, in fact the first team was nilled – a rare occurrence indeed! Some have said it was a terrible performance but was it really that bad? The pack stood up well to their French opposition although it wasn’t their best performance by a long way. Gomez seemed to be carrying a bit of an injury and when Bruce Starr came on the scrum looked a lot more solid – it is disappointing that Bruce injured his calf in training this week because he has played very well every time he has played.

The line out suffered without Codling and Stade stole more of our line outs than we stole of theirs. Auradou and James had great games and both looked to be about 8’ tall so perhaps it isn’t surprising we suffered a bit in the line.

Our back row suffered too, the lack of Vos showed because the support of the runner always looked a yard off the pace, Vos will be unavailable this weekend too but my mouth waters when I think of a back row of Vos, Sanderson and Diprose. Seeing Sanderson return as a replacement for Sherriff on 51 minutes was a welcome sign and he looked in fine form.

Bemand had a good game behind the scrum but the rest of the backs had trouble penetrating the well organised Stade defence. It was good to see Chris Bell back after a long lay off due to injury and shoulder surgery.

Stade came to defend against us and keep our scoring to a minimum – well they managed that and scored when we made mistakes – they certainly are a very good outfit.

Elsewhere in the club it was a fairly quiet week, the U21s beat Richmond 2nd XV 40-20 at the Richmond Athletic Ground, I haven’t seen a match report for this game so I cant report on who played well but the fact that they won is certainly a positive.

Sadly the Ladies lost a very close game against Chesham Ladies with Carey setting up Alex Burbidge for the Ladies’ only try of the game.

Congratulations must go to Chris Cracknell for being selected for the England U19s squad, Quins have a Lady player in the equivalent side – Leah Carey.

Finally the long term injured are a week closer to returning, hopefully Codling and Duncombe will be fit and ready for out cup game against Leeds.

Oh and I forgot to add another positive – I bought one of the warm Quins stadium coats (shame it’s in navy blue though)