By Leipziger
October 3 2010

Not long after full-time yesterday it took me about ten minutes to get served in The Stoop's east bar, but you've never seen a Carlsberg and a Strongbow poured so quickly.

Or indeed another Guinness for the fan beside me after a barman spilled one onto my shoes.

Hopefully the torrential rain that last night left me looking like a cross between Roy Hodgson and the demon from Jeepers Creepers cleaned the beer out of them.

Right, so in case you didn't know (and if you don't, then how in the world did you find this page?) our Falcons played Harlequins yesterday and lost 23-12.

Alan Tait's six changes to the starting lineup didn't do the job, at least in the first half when Quins were much the better side and could have been a lot more than 9-6 ahead at half time if they had converted their superiority into points.

Then again, Charlie Amesbury could not have been too far away from getting on the end of a crossfield kick from Jimmy Gopperth, the ball going dead before the former Quin could get on the end of it.

The match came very much alive in the second half – Jon Golding was sin-binned before I even knew he was on the pitch as I watched in horror penalty after penalty on our line from the outdoor bar, and finally a penalty try was given.

At 16-6 down the Falcons finally found some rhythm around 55 minutes in front of the loud away fans in the north stand. A 15-minute attacking spell might have ended early when Andy Henderson knocked on, but we managed to keep the pressure on for a long time.

Credit to the team I guess for still being in a position from which we could have won the game having been very much second best for most of the first hour.

I am feeling a little confused about our good second half spell. I am not going to say it is the part of the match that I enjoyed least, because that's not true, but it was probably the hardest to watch as it was right in front of us, and I felt I just had to keep on shouting despite a lager-dried throat and the constant frustration that we couldn't score. Oh for a try to relieve the tension!

At one point I felt my heart pounding like my room-mate last weekend snored, and I remembered once hearing that the human heart can only beat a finite number of times. I must have been 12 to believe it – I'm sure every Falcons fan is glad it isn't true, otherwise we might all only have a few years left!!

It got more frustrating though when Quins went back up the pitch and Tom Guest scored to put the game out of our reach.

With the strength of our defence during our spells in our own half today, I feel that if we had managed to get ahead in the second half then we would not have conceded another try, although Quins might have kicked themselves to a win.

As it was, if I believed in “deserving to win”, I'd say a fair result today would have been 30-12, as Quins were wasteful but were only in danger of losing for around 15 minutes.

I'm not quite as worried as I was at this stage last season, even though we have one less point, as I feel there is more to come from this team, something I would not have said a year ago.

We need results against Saracens and Northampton though. I know they are two of the top teams in this league but that doesn't matter – we have to get points from somewhere and they are next up. Two weeks to sort yourselves out boys.