By HSBC
February 28 2006

Having ventured up to Edinburgh on Friday morning, I decided what better way to spend a cold windy evening than in a half finished football stadium in Falkirk. OK the bit that was finished was very swish but it’s a pity it was facing the wind. Hence, please accept my apologies for this rather brief account of events; it was just too cold to hold a pen and write. (feeble excuse I know)

Looking at the game purely from a Quins point of view it was for the majority of the game centred on the exploits of Mike Brown, who made some excellent contributions with some fine runs and off loads, one of which resulted in a fine try.

England were always the dominant side and their pace was far too much for the Scots to handle, despite the game being close for the 1st half it was not long into the 2nd half that England pulled away and secured the game.

It was during the 2nd half a sin bin resulted in Alex Rogers getting a brief spell on the pitch. However, I wonder if a prop has ever had to wait so long to get on following a sin bin.

However, despite the control England had the rest of the Quins quintet remained on the bench until the 65th minute when Tosh Masson made his appearance, Alex along with Mark Lambert and Chris Robshaw had to wait until the 71st minute before they finally made it onto the pitch.

Although they did themselves no harm, it was difficult to see what they could really contribute in such a short time with the game already over.

The real positives from this are that at the end of the game, 33% of the English players were Quins, and if they improve and hopefully stay with Quins we must surely be looking to a bright future.