By AlanQuin
December 28 2010

A single moment of inspiration as Jordan Turner-Hall, deftly and unusually, kicked through the London Irish defence for George Lowe to run onto, gather and score the only try of the match was enough to take the match away from London Irish and give victory to Harlequins by 28 – 18.  Including the successful conversion, all the remaining points came from the boots of the respective fly-halfs.

The regularity of the whistle signalling yet another penalty ensured that the match never became the exciting spectacle that most of the 74212 crowd who almost filled Twickenham must have anticipated. Their hopes will have been raised as Care picked up a ball that Mapusua had dropped and put Tom Williams away along the wing only for a fine tackle from Malone to put Williams into touch and save an otherwise certain try.

The opening score came from the boot of Nick Evans after three minutes as the Exiles infringed at a ruck.   A cross kick aimed at Ojo produced a breakdown at which Quins infringed and Malone levelled the score after ten minutes.

The reply from Quins was immediate as, with a good chase from the restart, they forced Irish to give away another three points from a penalty immediately on front of the posts.  But Irish soon forced another infringement from Quins as Care was caught in possession when the ball popped out of the side of a scrum.  Malone again brought the scores level.

The next three kicks fell to Evans who succeeded with two of them to open a lead to 12 - 6. The remainder of the half produced two more kickable penalties for either side and the half ended with the score at 18 – 12, the final three points coming as the further punishment for a yellow card for the Exiles’ lock Bob Casey, the referee’s patience with breakdown infringements having expired.

Five minutes into the second half Malone reduced the gap with his fifth successful penalty after Care was caught at the base of a scrum by Thorpe. Inevitably the next opportunity fell  to Evans for a high tackle on Care, and Evans , too, was successful, The score was now 21 – 15 and remained so as for the first time Malone missed with a difficult kick from the touchline.

Irish now produced their first real attacks of the game and were able to build great pressure from their forwards camped on the Quins’ try line. One after another attempted drives to score were prevented, stopped, held and pushed back by excellent defence.   Inevitably another penalty was conceded and this time Danny Care was shown the yellow card for killing the attack.  Malone made no mistake with the kick to reduce the arrears.

As the game moved into the final quarter, Harlequins gained position and began to put severe pressure on the Irish defence deep in the visitors’ twenty-two. The Irish defence held until Turner-Hall put his excellent low kick through the defence for Lowe to chase. It was the single decisive moment which gave Quins victory.

In the ten remaining minutes Irish threw all they had into the battle and Quins had to tackle hard and often and defend with organisation and commitment.  They conceded penalties and were fortunate that the referee apparently forgot he had a yellow card to flourish.  Irish, too, forgot they had at least a bonus point to salvage and were only interested in a try.  In the end they had neither try nor bonus.  Quins had an important win.

After the match a much happier Conor O’Shea said: "From our point of view, we definitely needed that win more than they did.  Between third and seventh there are only seven points. It is tight. If we had lost there would have been a 10-11 point gap, which would have been too much.

"We are in the mix in the Amlin, the LV and I think we have put ourselves in the mix today in the Premiership with that win.  This win allows us the chance to get into the top four and we have a lot of home games coming up. That was a home game for us today and it is important we win our home games.

"A loss after the way we played against Saracens would have been hard to take but there is more to come from us. We can play a lot better. In our last nine games we have won six, drawn one and lost two - and I don't think we are playing as well as we can.

"The crowd might not have seen huge entertainment in terms of the rugby spectacle but as the game wore on it got better and the defence towards the end shows a group of players, from my point of view, that are willing to do anything for each other.That is not coaching, it is a bond that has been created."

Harlequins Brown; Williams, Lowe, Turner-Hall, Monye (Casson, 75); Evans, Care (Fa'asavalu, 72); Marler, Gray, Johnston (Lambert, 60), Kohn (Vallejos, 62), Robson, Robshaw (capt), Skinner (Dickson, 62), Easter.

London Irish D Armitage; Ojo, Mapusua (Seveali'i, 67), Bowden, Tagicakibau; Malone, Hodgson; Dermody (capt; Murphy, 67), Buckland, Rautenbach (Corbisiero, 47), Kennedy (Garvey, 67), Casey, Thorpe (Roche, 67), S Armitage, Stowers.

Referee A Small (London).  Attendance 74,212.