.png)
6 hours ago
7
Harlequins back? Or is this latest outrageous twist in the story of their inconsistency a case of same old, same old? First, it needs to be acknowledged that this was a comprehensive dismantling of a side who had not lost a game this season. This was hardly the Stormers’ first team, but an unbeaten squad is an unbeaten squad. God knows, they are beaten now.
The notion that Harlequins are one of the Premiership’s whipping boys was made to look absurd as they strutted the turf of the Stoop with supreme confidence and aplomb. Try after try followed, a hat-trick for Nick David with consecutive tries either side of half-time. But the star performers were legion here. Their eighth try (of nine) on the hour opened up a 54-0 lead. How far away seemed the last few weeks, in which they have conceded nigh-on 150 points in three Premiership matches. And yet, for the neutral, that niggle about the Stormers’ team sheet will remain.
It would be unfair to complain about South Africans sending over weakened teams at this pivotal point of the pool stages of an elite competition. Such practices are hardly unheard of in the Champions Cup and its previous iterations. The French, anyone? But the sheer distances teams have to travel now is an enduring flaw in this latest format. No wonder teams from both sides of the equator pick and choose their moments.
The Stormers may be top – and unbeaten – of the United Rugby Championship, but the team they sent to London for this contained 12 changes from the one that dispatched mighty La Rochelle in the previous round before Christmas. Not that Quins gave any impression they were studying the opposition’s team sheet. They burst into the match as if they had redemption on their mind. First try after six minutes, bonus point wrapped up in the 26th, scoring at more than a point a minute by the half-hour mark – 33-0 up at the break.
Where to begin describing the tries, where the star performers? Jack Kenningham scored the game’s first, and the club stalwart was superb in all departments. As were his mates in the back row, Alex Dombrandt, now back and firing, and Chandler Cunningham-South, both try-scorers, of Quins’ third and fourth respectively.
Cadan Murley, another constant threat, had scored the second, with characteristic acrobatics in the corner, but his fellow winger David took over from there. His first, on the half-hour, was a thing of beauty. A great line from Luke Northmore, who looks fantastic again in the centre, precipitated interplay between David, Murley and Tyrone Green (another back from injury) set up the former in the corner. Marcus Smith, assured but relatively understated amid the carnival, landed his fourth of five first-half conversions from the touchline.
David’s second in the third quarter was a length-of-the-field study in brilliance, from Cunningham-South’s turnover yards from their line to his shuddering carry a few seconds later, Dombrandt’s support play and the interplay between David and Northmore to finish off. When David scored his hat-trick try on the hour, the Stoop was euphoric, all the more so when Zach Carr scored with his first touch two minutes later.
Imad Khan and Dylan Maart replied with tries at last for the visitors, before Jarrod Evans’s try afforded Smith the chance to convert Quins into the 60s for the second time running in this competition. They are through to the last 16. Whether they can win a home tie will depend on their trip to La Rochelle next Sunday. That will be, how to put this, somewhat harder an assignment than this. But one step at a time.
