Quality of Quins’ European win stuns even triumphant players
HARLEQUINS No8 Nick Easter admitted the quality of their performance in Saturday’s bonus-point 32-8 win at Racing Metro shocked even their own dressing room.
With two defeats to open up their Heineken Cup campaign, Quins gave their qualification cause a huge boost as Nick Evans, Easter, Charlie Walker and then Karl Dickson all went over.
Consequently Quins climbed from bottom to second in Pool Four, and Easter said: “We didn’t think it would go that well. We’re not a results-orientated side, we just wanted to put a good performance out on the park.
“We like to play with intensity and we came close to doing that for the full 80 minutes here. We know how tough this pool is and now we have to back it up next week.”
Meanwhile, Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall praised his side’s ruthless edge as they claimed a bonus point in Italy with a 39-10 win against Zebre.
George Kruis, Ernst Joubert and Chris Wyles all crossed before Chris Ashton scored twice in the space of eight second-half minutes to wrap up the victory.
McCall said: “It was a really good performance because we did a very clinical job on Zebre, especially in the first half. The energy of the group in the opening 35 minutes was outstanding, we took our chances when they were there.”
In the Amlin Challenge Cup Pool Four leaders London Wasps beat Grenoble 47-7 and, in Pool Five, London Irish grabbed a 24-13 win over Stade Francais.
Every match in the Aviva Premiership is crucial, to support your team buy your ticket from premiershiprugby.com/tickets