Worcester have tripled their points tally, snatching two bonus points with three tries in the last quarter of an hour of a match they had set alight. To come to the Stoop and score six tries, to their hosts’ five, is not the behaviour of relegation candidates. Alas, losing despite it all, is. They are now just three points adrift of London Irish at the bottom.
Quins, meanwhile, move up to the rarefied heights of third, albeit for now, with this bonus-point win at the end of a miserable week. Last Sunday they were all but eliminated from Europe, picking up two further suspensions to take their list of unavailable players to 28, and then the speculation burst forth that Marland Yarde is leaving for Sale.
“Marland is under contract and he doesn’t go anywhere unless it suits us,” said John Kingston, Quins’ director of rugby, who left him out here for the second weekend in a row. “I don’t know [if he’ll play for us again]. We will have to see how things map out over the next few days.”
As it happens, Yarde’s replacement, Charlie Walker scored a brilliant solo try, Harlequins’ fifth. That marked the end of a burst of three tries in 20 minutes of the second half that took them away from their visitors for this not altogether convincing win. If Worcester had not missed five conversions and a penalty, the top four would have felt a long way off for Quins indeed.
Jono Lance, Worcester’s 27-year-old Aussie fly-half signed from the Western Force until Christmas, made his Premiership debut and missed five of the six, all of them difficult, but otherwise he looks as if he might transform the Warriors. This outfit have never lacked imagination, but they found yet another dimension here.
Lance laid on all three of their first-half tries, each featuring an outrageous flash of skill from someone. Wynand Olivier’s reverse flick set him away to set up Dave Denton for the first, his cross-kick found Perry Humphreys for the second, and his brilliant hands put Josh Adams over in the corner for the third.
But Worcester turned round just the one point clear, Quins bookending their first-half spree with tries of their own. Marcus Smith, who scored 18 points, ghosted over in only the third minute, before Matt Luamanu forced his way to the line on the stroke of half-time.
Then, within five minutes of the restart, that Worcester lead was gone altogether. The Warriors could not control the ball at a scrum, and Danny Care was on to it in a flash, brilliantly dribbling to the dead-ball area, where he touched down with style.
Two further tries in the next 20 minutes took the game away from Worcester in cruelly swift fashion. Jamie Roberts crashed through what was left of the visitors’ defence after Care had torn it apart for the bonus-point try, and their fifth followed early in the final quarter, when Mike Brown’s quick throw-in fed Walker, who set off on a slaloming run past four defenders to the posts.
That left Worcester looking bereft, but their efforts were rewarded with those three late tries, all of them beauties, the first and third coming with a bonus point. Dean Hammond scored the first two, one after another clean break by Lance, then Jack Singleton dummied and stepped his way to the line in the 78th minute. The second bonus point hung on the conversion. Tom Heathcote, now invested with the responsibility, landed it, a successful conversion at the sixth attempt, and Worcester had the least they deserved. On another day, they could have had more. Keep playing like this, and they surely will.
