English rugby long ago gave up trying to explain the phenomenon that is Harlequins. Quantum physicists would struggle. Two weeks ago here, we watched this same team put 60 past the thitherto unbeaten Stormers from South Africa on the way to qualifying from the Champions Cup group stage, a competition for the best domestic sides in Europe and, as if that were not enough, South Africa, a land of frightening beasts and double World Cup-winners.
This is the same team that won in La Rochelle only last weekend to clinch that home tie in the last 16. Ridiculously, it was Quins’ win against all odds on the west coast of France that afforded Leicester last-gasp entrance by default into that very same elite of the elite. Well, you would never have guessed it, had you been here to witness the latest capitulation at the Stoop, a 34-7 humiliation on Saturday.
Only one team in it, is the cliche that most readily comes to mind. Leicester, who have it all to play for in the Prem, in a way that Harlequins do not, utterly dominated their hosts up front, from which flowed all else. The bonus point takes them into the top four. Cameron Henderson, not required by Scotland, was magnificent again in the engine room; Tommy Reffell, not required by Wales (really?), maddening at the breakdown, and Joe Heyes, very much required by England, squeezed penalty after penalty out of the Harlequins scrum.
This was no bad place to be if you were Six Nations-spotting. Indeed, Leicester’s props will probably be facing each other across the road in a fortnight, when England entertain Wales on the opening weekend. Their dominance here at the scrum, against props, it should be said, who were clearly ailing with injuries in the first half, earned the Tigers licence to do what they liked elsewhere, safe in the knowledge a penalty was never far away.
All the more remarkable, given Leicester had not trained until Wednesday, 12 of their players and four of their staff having picked up E coli on the trip to Cape Town last weekend. “We were closed on Tuesday,” said Geoff Parling, the Tigers head coach. “None of the 42 in the travelling squad were allowed in. By Wednesday there were only six players who had not had symptoms 24 hours earlier, so we did one training session then.”
They had certainly worked more than a few issues out of their system by kick-off. Not that they leave without concerns. England-spotters will have noted the way Jack van Poortvliet limped off in the second half. Parling hoped it was just a dead leg, but England will take over his rehab from here.
Fingers will be crossed in light of his outrageous individual try, Leicester’s second, midway through the first half. Gabriel Hamer-Webb, required by Wales, had finished a few minutes earlier for the Tigers’ first, when Van Poortvliet received the ball from a short lineout, surrounded by defenders, and accelerated, chipped, gathered, stepped and accelerated all over again, for the try of the match.
Another individual try was scored by another in England’s Six Nation’s squad midway through the second half, this one by Freddie Steward. He rarely looks anything less than rock solid under the high ball but questions over his all-round nimbleness resulted in England’s preference for Marcus Smith at full-back in last year’s Six Nations. Steward played his way back in during the autumn, and the line he picked for his try here would suggest his attacking game continues to tick over.
Smith had his moments – does he not always – but such was the onslaught his teammates suffered up front, the odd flash of brilliance, often where a counterattacking full-back might find himself, was all he could come up with. Chandler Cunningham-South and Cadan Murley were Quins’ other England representatives, and each of their highlights reels might also catch the eye, but this was no day to be a Quin.
But for a last-minute try by Cunningham-South, reaching out of a tackle to make the line, just, this would have been Harlequins’ first failure to score a point here since 2014. By then the Stoop, sold out again, was emptying at a noticeable rate. The perplexity – nay the frustration, the anger – is understandable. Not only must the inconsistency exasperate, an often-overlooked, but salient, truth is that Harlequins these days generate by some distance the highest revenue of all the English clubs, nearly £30m at the last count.
You might say they are the embodiment of not just English rugby, underachievers despite the most financially powerful union behind them, but rugby in general. On the surface, all seems well, the quality of the spectacle reaching ever-higher levels of exhilaration, yet the finances behind it are yawning, the health concerns galling.
To visit Harlequins is to be reminded of the best of rugby in the professional era. The faithful were subdued, almost as much as their team, but there are few places as raucous and colourful as the Stoop on a standard matchday, which usually means entertainment of the highest order. How they have transitioned from the very embodiment of rugby union’s stereotype in the 1980s – an elitist and esoteric ritual watched by a few hundred green wellies on a grassy knoll – to the embodiment of all rugby aspires to be might serve as no less than a blueprint for the others.
But they cannot make it work for love nor revenue at the moment. Or at least they can’t in one competition, just as in the other they are imperious. That’s rugby for you. Who knows what makes it tick. Who knows where it will be in the medium term, let alone the long. That’s Harlequins for you too. We’ll keep watching, though.
