mens
gallagher-prime minister
Harlquins scrumhalf Will Porter says it’s “us against the world” as Jason Gilmore makes eight changes for Sunday afternoon’s trip to Sale Sharks, with England Fly-half Marcus Smith makes his first appearance of the season.
Gilmore recalls Smith on his 198th appearance for Quins after a finger injury, while Luke Northmore and Tyrone Green start in the backline and Sam Riley starts at the swashbuckling and stubborn Simon Kerrod after last week’s 48-0 defeat of Gloucester.
Ireland international Kieran Treadwell starts in the engine room, Seb Driscoll returns to openside and Chandler Cunningham-South starts at the back of the scrum.
Quins legend Ugo Monye described the hammering at Kingsholm, their heaviest league defeat in 26 years, which left them bottom of the Gallagher PREM table, as “one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen”.
But scrum-half Porter says he won’t let outside noise come and tear the team apart and knows he owes the Quins fans a performance in the North West.
“In those moments you have to make a decision whether you’re going to let the outside noises go and break up as a team or come together, use it almost as motivation to move on.”
“We’re very early in the season and we’re looking at our PREM Cup and our pre-season games. Those were great building blocks for us, even our performance against Bath the week before; even though we didn’t win, we were able to take a lot of positive things away in attacks and the like.
“So we can’t let just one week undo 12 or 13 weeks of work. So we understand the result (against Gloucester) but again, we’re not going to let it undo weeks and weeks of work, which we’re really confident about.
“We owe it to our fans, who are incredible when it comes to travel, to support us at home games. We owe them a good game. We want to shoot and play the Harlequins way, which is a fun brand of rugby and threatens from anywhere.”
“We’re going to sell, fully confident that we can get a result, and we’re going to take as many shots as we can. And hopefully we’ll get a result.”
“From a player’s perspective, you just try to stay away from outside noise, if I have to. Obviously, it’s never nice to hear things like that, but I think it can be great fuel in terms of really getting fired up for this weekend.”
“(It) almost brings the team together. It’s us against the world, and we’re lucky to have that mindset. We want to change people’s perception of us, and I think that’s going to get some results this weekend
harlequins: George Furbank, Tyrone Green, Luke Northmore, Bryn Bradley, Cadan Murley (c), Marcus Smith, Will Porter, Will Hobson, Sam Riley, Simon Kerrod, James Dun, Kieran Treadwell, Jack Keningham, Seb Driscoll, Chandler Cunningham-South.
Replacements: Jack Walker, Harry Johnson-Holmes, Ollie Streeter, Guido Petti Pagadizábal, Lucas Schmid, Lucas Friday, Oscar Beard, Rodrigo Isgro