mens
Gallagher-Prime Minister
Harlequins head coach Jason Gilmore described his side’s performance as “completely unacceptable” after seeing them slump to their worst league defeat since 2000. Gloucester inflicted a 48-0 thrashing on them at Kingsholm.
Harlequins, without equal England internationals Marcus Smith and Alex Dombrant were completely outplayed in all aspects of the Gallagher Prem game and never threatened to open the account.
Gloucester scored eight tries with Ben Loader, Jac Morgan, Will Trenholm, Charlie Atkinson, Seb Atkinson, Will Joseph, Caolan Engefield and George Barton all on the try scoreboard and Barton converting four.
If the winners had not removed their leading players in the last quarter, which ended without goals, then the defeat would have been even more difficult.
Gilmore said: “The performance was completely unacceptable and you don’t win a game with 21-5 penalties against you.
“We fed the umpire, which meant we were fighting for possession, and they were able to get easy field position and were able to get 20 red zone line outs on our five.
“At half-time we felt we could still do something, but conceding two tries in the first four minutes after the break took the wind out of our sails.
“That put the score beyond doubt and we got out of control after that as we tried to chase the game.”
Gloucester’s opening season has been impressive. Last weekend they made a statement of their intent with a convincing 45-24 win at Exeter, while the Devonians showed their mettle the rest of the game – with a narrow 40-34 defeat at Bath.
In truth, Gloucester’s performance was not as good as last week’s because the opposition was so poor that day, and Quins’ embarrassment would have been even greater if the hosts had been as accurate as they were at Sandy Park.
However, head coach George Skivington was upbeat and said: “I was expecting a good performance but I wasn’t expecting anything, which is very difficult to do in Prem.
“The Nilling team are outstanding and show great character. We worked hard to be quicker off the line in defense and what I was particularly pleased about was how we came back at the end to save our line.
“I’m pretty happy with how it went, but we could have done a lot better and that’s a testament to the group that they’re not happy.
“We said at half-time that we were in a good place but we had to take a few more chances and I thought we were more accurate with our shots in the second half.”