Harlequins boss blasts ‘unacceptable’ Gloucester defeat as players left ‘disappointed and embarrassed’
Jason Gilmore branded his side's defeat to Gloucester as 'unacceptable'.
Harlequins head coach Jason Gilmore has branded his side’s 48-0 defeat to Gloucester as ‘unacceptable’, detailing that his players were left ’embarrassed’ in the changing rooms after the full-time whistle.
The Londoners conceded eight tries in the resounding defeat at Kingsholm, which marks their second successive defeat in the opening round of the PREM Rugby season.
As a result, Harlequins sit bottom of the league table, and still seek their first points of the campaign.
Harlequins boss brands Gloucester defeat ‘unacceptable’
“That performance was unacceptable,” Gilmore told the media after their defeat. “I just had a chat to the boys; I think it was a 21-to-5 penalty count against us. I don’t care who you are, you’re not winning a game, you’re not getting anywhere near a game with that penalty count. So, we’re going to have to do a bit of digging in and around that.
“And as a result of that, Gloucester had 20 lineout launches to our five, and most of those were in good field position. We struggled to maintain possession and we struggled for field position. And that was down to discipline.”
Quins found themselves on the back foot early in the game, with Ben Loader and Jac Morgan crossing inside the opening 20 minutes while Gloucester also took a healthy 24-0 lead into the sheds at half-time.
That eventually became 48-0 in the second half, with Gloucester again hitting quickly with four tries inside the opening 15 minutes of that period.
“If you look at the first ten minutes, we turned over a scrum on our feed and lost two of our lineouts,” the head coach reflected. “In terms of being able to build momentum early in the game, we let them off the hook.
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“With the penalties, we were defending five-metre mauls and defending pick-and-goes. Most of the penalties in that zone are going to go to the attacking team, and we fed the referee. We used up a lot of gas in that first-half with lineout maul and pick-and-go defence.
“We probably spun out of control a little bit in that second half just chasing the game, which the boys had no other choice.”
However, while he was quick to emphasise he would not accept the performance from his side, Gilmore feels his side are still in the early stages of a longer project following a dramatic overhaul of the coaching staff and squad in the off-season.
“They’re (the players) extremely disappointed and embarrassed with it; but if we have a good win, we’re not going to celebrate like we’ve won the league either,” he added. “We’ve got to be men with it. We’ve got to be mature. We’ve got to get our learnings out of this game.
“We’ve got to move forward because the competition is so difficult week to week. If we’re going to sit around all week and lick our wounds, we’ll cop it again next week. We’ve got a great opportunity to go up to Manchester and show what we can do.
“I said to the boys, where we’ve been and where we’re taking this club; there’s going to be up and down days. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not accepting that performance tonight, whatsoever, because it’s not acceptable, but we’ve got a good group of men in there.
“We’ve seen some really positive signs in our previous month of rugby, but tonight was well off the mark. We’ve got to turn up Tuesday and be ready to go against Sale next week.”
