Harlequins 2018-19 Season

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Harlequins

New Head of Rugby in Paul Gustard
Other coaches -
Billy Millard (general manager)
Mark Mapletoft (Head Coach)
Alex Codling (forwards coach)
Nick Easter (?)
Colin Osbourne (skills coach)
Nick Evans (Attacks coach)
Adam Jones (Ass. forwards coach)


Ins: Nick Auterac (Bath), Max Crumpton (Bristol Bears), Alex Dombrandt (Cardiff Met), Nathan Earle (Saracens), Matt Symons (Wasps) and Ben Tapuai (Bath).

Outs: Sam Aspland-Robinson (Leicester Tigers), Cameron Holenstein (Jersey Reds), Adam Jones (retired), Charlie Matthews (Wasps), Jamie Roberts (Bath), Harry Sloan (Ealing Trailfinders) and Winston Stanley (retired). Rowntree (wasps), Joe Grey, Sam Twomey

What's the general feeling about the upcoming season?
New boss coming in that will want to shake things up a bit, but still with a large contingent of the old coaching team in place.  Only Kingston and Rowntree moving on.  
Does anyone know what Easters coaching role will be?

New signatures aren't awe inspiring -
Auterac was billed as an incredibly powerful young prop, but had a lot of problems with injury and struggled to get into the Bath starting line up - I have been told by a Bath supporter that he was picked when fit.
Crumpton I don't know much about, same goes for Dombrandt - feeling is that they may be squad fillers and mostly play A-league (happy to be proved wrong)
Earl looks to be a good talent, and adept at covering 15 and wing - will hopefully work well with Charlie walker, Visser, and young Ibitoye
Symons was massively hyped when he came back to the UK, just not kicked on for Wasps - presumably looking for a fresh start.  Quins really need a decent lump in the engine room to complement Horwell and Merrick.
Tapuai  - A ball playing centre, good hands and feet.  No idea what he is like defensively.  I cant help feeling that in the past Quins have been better with someone in the middle to carry the ball hard (which is why Sloan leaving is a bit of a blow).  Tapuai, Marchant, Saili all feels a little 'lightweight' for me. (especially if Marcus Smith is starting 10)

2018/19 Harlequins Squad
Hookers -
Rob Buchanan  
Max Crumpton  
Elia Elia  
Dave Ward  

Props -
Nick Auterac  
Lewis Boyce  
Will Collier  
Mark Lambert  
Joe Marler  
Josh McNulty  
Kyle Sinckler  
Phil Swainston  

Locks -
Alex Dombrandt  
Ben Glynn  
James Horwill
George Merrick  
Stan South  
Matt Symons  

Flanks -  
Renaldo Bothma  
James Chisholm  
Chris Robshaw  
Luke Wallace  

No.8 -
Jack Clifford  
Mat Luamanu  

No.9 -
Danny Care  
Dave Lewis  
Charlie Mulchrone

Fly-Half -
Demetri Catrakilis  
James Lang  
Marcus Smith  
Tim Swiel

Centre -  
Joe Marchant  
Francis Saili  
Ben Tapuai  

Wings -
Alofa Alofa  
Henry Cheeseman  
Nathan Earle  
Jonas Mikalcius  
Tim Visser  
Charlie Walker  

15 -
Mike Brown  
Ross Chisholm  
Aaron Morris

Looks like it was 50-17 to the soapdodgers:
https://theoffsideline.com/warriors-eight-tries-perth/

Time to quickly roll out the pre season means nothing argument

Looked like a strong quins team on paper though

Word from people who were there is that Glasgow played to the ref (who was very lax on offside), and Quins failed to cope. A bit like Gustard’s last visit to Scotland...

I like Gustard's interview afterwards. 

He basically said 'well, that was a pile of old poop, wasn't it?'

Looks like a tight win against Ealing but a win still. Roll on the regular season!

The Ealing game was pretty disappointing.

Defence was reasonably strong but struggled if someone broke the line. Attack was interesting in places but far too many promising breaks ended in dropped balls or turnovers. Discipline was awful in the first half, albeit I think some of the pens were refereeing errors.

Quins looked a lot like a bunch of guys who hadn’t played together before. I am not confident about the Sale game now.

Neither am I, I've only read the write ups and watched highlights but you're right pf. Quins look like they haven't met each other. The defense is the biggest worry, you can do well with a poor attack but solid defense. But rubbish defense will end us.

Hopefully as the season goes on we'll gel though.

Well, I only listened to that on the radio, but sounded pretty promising.

I've said the last few seasons that we have a solid squad, hopefully now we've got rid of the malaise that was infecting the club we can start playing to our potential.

I'm waiting to watch the ext need highlights. But from what I've read a good game all round, and doubly so for going behind on the board and not panicking

Apparently the defense was much improved too

Hopefully Poorfour can give us more info soon

Yes, defence was strong - we absorbed several long periods without the ball while keeping Sale contained, including two where we kept them out in the 5m zone. We probably conceded too many points overall, but their tries came essentially from first phase breaks.

Scrum was solid, lineout had a couple of wobbles but was good defensively, maul defence improved over the course of the game. Breakdown was competitive, and the key thing was that we were recycling quickly enough to stay on the front foot.

As PG said afterwards, the odd thing is how much room for improvement there still is, but this was a very satisfactory start and much better than we might have expected.

That sounds promising. Sounds like a lot of our weaknesses from last season have been worked on.

How was Ellia at hooker? After last season I thought he could go on to be our starting choice this season.

yappysnap wrote:That sounds promising. Sounds like a lot of our weaknesses from last season have been worked on.

How was Ellia at hooker? After last season I thought he could go on to be our starting choice this season.

Elia was fine. The pleasant surprise was how effective Max Crumpton was as his replacement. I don’t think either of them have the quite potential in the loose that Buchanan showed before his injury, but they both look able to do the job.

He was quality pre injury, poor darts aside. You just can't train that level of aggression in contact that he brought.

Good game in the A league too as well, reasons to be a little whitely optimistic this year maybe.

Also we're 1 point ahead on the premiership road map so far.

Looks like another very good win in the A league, with Ross Chisholm taking the goal kicks after Swiel went off Injured.

An unfortunate showing on Saturday - still a lot of elements reminiscent of last season!
I was pleased that Quins managed to fight back for the 2pts (that bit of grit wasn't there last season) - but still, far too many compounded errors.

Mulchrone and Lang seemed to make an impact....perhaps Gustard should be looking to give them more starts.

Also, many names still missing - Robshaw, Care and Marler off the bench were the main senior players. (+Lambert/Wallace).
The guys did well but why are we starting Dino Lamb and Stan South?

When are we going to see the likes of - Sinks, Horwell, Catrakilis, Francis Saili, Visser, Ibitoye, Loumanu (Louamanu/Visser and Ibitoye have been playing A-league).

Does anyone know anything more about our special deal with the AB's?

Demetri Catrakilis - value for money or not.....discuss!

Misses crucial penalty,
throws an intercept pass
seems to kill most attacking phases

(last one might be a little harsh).

Does anyone know if there are any pre-season matches planned?

Pre season will be later as the season starts late surely?

Premiership Cup starts on 20th September. Four rounds of that would serve pretty well as a pre-season warmup, but would mean teams are in training for a long time as they all reported back at the usual time.

LondonTiger wrote:Premiership Cup starts on 20th September. Four rounds of that would serve pretty well as a pre-season warmup, but would mean teams are in training for a long time as they all reported back at the usual time.

There's also the sevens competition. Maybe that'll be taken more seriously this year and some more first team fringe players will feature as opposed to youngsters and ringers.

I know we are using the cup games as our friendlies.

Cheers Chaps,

Hopefully the longer conditioning time will lead to less injuries over the season.

Should be interesting to see.

Also it should help Irish, as usually the new team up doesnt have long to gel players, but this season LI will have longer then most.

Care and EliaElia out for the start of the season.
I think I read somewhere that new Signing Landajo (sp?) isn't joining up with Quins for a couple of weeks yet.
So presume that Mulchrone and Nial Saunders will be our early starting 9's.

I thought Mulchrone had retired for fitness reasons!

I see Bothma announced his retirement from International rugby yesterday - I assume he was cut from Namibia's squad?

propdavid_london wrote:Harlequins

...
Crumpton I don't know much about, same goes for Dombrandt - feeling is that they may be squad fillers and mostly play A-league (happy to be proved wrong)
...

Being proved wrong isn't always bad..

Yes, I presumed that too. Hopefully with a full pre-season with Quins he might be able to play a few more games.
Our back row is going to be largely unaffected by the WC.

We are going to have the pick of -
Ronaldo Bothma
Tom Lawday
Will Evans
Dombrant
Clifford
Robshaw
James Chisholm

Dino Lamb/Archie White from the academy.

Only Kunatani I think is in his respective WC squad!

If all the squad members are fit for the start of the season I would expect quite a lot of rotation.

lostinwales wrote:

propdavid_london wrote:Harlequins

...
Crumpton I don't know much about, same goes for Dombrandt - feeling is that they may be squad fillers and mostly play A-league (happy to be proved wrong)
...

Being proved wrong isn't always bad..

Very true. I think Dombrant surprised a good number of people.
Crumpton too looked good when he got his chances....good ball carrier and solid set piece.