Harlequins
Harlequins Top of the Table! - Harlequins 26-13 Northampton
By DOK
September 12 2011
OK, so now Exeter are actually top of the table but for a brief 24(ish) hour period Harlequins held that honour.
That came care of two victories, the first over London Irish at Twickenham and the second over Northampton at the Stoop. Being (one time) local rivals, I had always assumed it was London Irish against whom Harlequins measured themselves, but I learned last season from Conor O’Shea that it is in fact Northampton. Proof of that came this week in a report by Deloitte’s on European rugby, Northampton 11th for revenue, Harlequins 14th and Northampton 8th for crowd size and Harlequins 11th.
So, if Northampton were the yardstick against which we measured ourselves, how did we do?
With both teams missing players due to RWC call ups and injuries both teams were looking a little makeshift. Of particular concern to Harlequins was the back row, where Will Skinner withdrew from the game despite being initially named as playing.
The game kicked off with typical industry from Harlequins. We recovered our own kick off, went left, right, left. Ollie Kohn boshed it up the middle, it went out left and Wallace was stopped just short. Harlequins eventually pushed over the line but JP Doyle couldn’t see the grounding. 10 phases of play resulted in Harlequins penalty and 3-0 to Harlequins (it was the kind of sitter that Johnny Wilkinson would have missed, but Nick Evans didn’t).
After trying to run out the restart and failing, Evans booted a huge kick downfield to Tonks who had a rush of blood to the head and kicked it out on the full. Mujati vs Marler was about even from what I could see of that scrum. But all the pressure was on Northampton, even their rolling maul was going nowhere.
Northampton were now perhaps guilty of trying too hard. Great play by Quins, Evans did a perfect cross field kick to Ugo, he batted it back to Chris York who unfortunately knocked it on, but it showed the way Harlequins were prepared to mix it up.
Myler put another kick out on the full, wasting a rare bit of possession for Northampton. A few minutes later Evans showed how to do it with an inch perfect kick to touch in the Northampton 22. Unfortunately Joe Marler was then penalised. Robson was penalised in the subsequent driving maul, and Harlequins lost any gains made.
There followed a lot of Northampton attacks snuffed out by Harlequins. Robshaw was everywhere.
A huge kick by Evans put Harlequins back in the Saints 22. From a Harlequins scrum Harlequins attacked the 5 metre line. Northampton were pinged for not rolling away, so 6-0 to Harlequins with 20 minutes gone. This is going better than I hoped!
Northampton eventually worked a 5 metre line out, did some pick and goes, out to the backs and then down the line. Tonks dived between two Harlequins players for a try. Myler slotted the kick from about 5 metres in from touch, great kick. Score 6-7.
After some kick tennis, Harlequins got back into the opposing 22. A penalty for not rolling away followed, meaning Harlequins regained the lead 9-7.
Mike Brown then took a quick penalty, making great yards before being stopped by Phil Dowson. Unfortunately for Saints Brown was stopped illegally, so Evans had the chance to slot another penalty and of course didn’t miss. 12-7 to Harlequins with 7 minutes to half time.
The half finished with a drop goal attempt from Nick Evans from about 35 metres out, but it just drifted past the left hand post.
Stats for first half were 38% in Saints 22, 26% in Saints half, 15% in Quins half, 21% in Quins 22.
Harlequins 5 penalties to Northampton’s 9.
There then started the best period of play for Harlequins. After some good pressure in the Saints half, a penalty by Tom May for not rolling away resulted in some sustained pressure just outside the 22. Eventually Dickson squeezed between two defenders outside a ruck, offloaded to Joe Gray who thundered over for his first try. Of course Evans slotted it, so 19-7 to Harlequins!
Harlequins switched off at the kick off, a bouncing ball was ignored by York. Taken by Lowe but with no support the penalty was given for not releasing. Myler kicked it for 19-10.
Harlequins gathered the restart and applied pressure in the Saints 22 for the next few minutes. From a ruck just on the 22, Dickson fed Evans Fed Lowe to Jordan Turner-Hall, back to Lowe, out to Ugo who ran in unopposed. Fantastic try, well made considering Northampton did have defensive numbers in place. I don’t need to tell you Evans booted it, so 26-10!
Harlequins stopped playing for possession at this point, and kind of went into their shells. Northampton brought on Ryan Lamb to try and turn things around. Northampton were helped by the fact JP Doyle seemed to take against James Johnson. Nothing he did was right, in the loose or the tight. Eventually he was penalised for not binding, and Ryan Lamb made it 26-13.
Harlequins were still applying pressure in the opposition half, but not able to get any decent possession. JJ penalised again for standing up in the scrum. You could see the Saints hooker and prop engineering this, but JP Doyle swallowed the bait.
Northampton eventually worked their way down to the Harlequins half, but time was ebbing away all the time. A held up scrum in the Saints half led to a scrum for them. I was hardly shocked when JJ was penalised again for binding on the arm.
In the Quins 22 Northampton could have had 3 points, but went for the catch and drive instead. In the subsequent ruck it was JJ penalised for offside, and given a yellow card with 6 minutes to go.
So Harlequins down to 14 men, could Northampton take advantage? They tried some pick and goes, they tried going wide but Tom May was caught holding on and Harlequins lived to fight another day.
With 3 minutes to go Saints got over eager and gave away another penalty. Evans drove play back to the opposition 10 metre line. We tried to run down the clock with pick and goes, but JP Doyle found another penalty to award against us.
A last ditch effort by Northampton was repulsed by Ugo Monye, the clock counted down and Dickson kicked it out! We’d won!
At the press conference afterwards, Conor praised York and Wallace for stepping up. Said we played well for 60 minutes and then switched off a bit. Said we’d win a lot of games if we kept playing like that. George and Jordan combined brilliantly together. The technical name for Will Skinner’s condition was “battered”. Guest out for 6-7 weeks, 3 weeks to come back so around 10 weeks.
One last thing to mention is the crowd. The official attendance was 10K or thereabouts, which means around 8K turned up. But what great support they gave the team. Northampton support wasn’t even heard where we were sitting. So a great performance by the crowd, well done all!
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Quote:Squirrel Nutquin
Thanks for the report. BTW we are not top now! Check it out in the papers this morning.
Perhaps you should have actually read the report!
Those of us that don't have much holiday entitlement left before the end of the year are having to work out which games we want to use it for. With Heineken Cup weekends in Limerick and France coming up I guess that a Friday night in SW London/Stockport/Worcester doesn't take priority.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to bleat about it all over the internet"
It was a fine result but the reality is that Quins should've been pushing the makeshift Saints team for a bonus point win, not scambling around in defence for the last 15 minutes.
