Paul Gustard hails Quins’ resilience after red card

Colin Newboult
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Harlequins coach Paul Gustard before the Gallagher Premiership match at Kingsholm Stadium, Gloucester.

Harlequins head of rugby Paul Gustard praised his side’s reaction to briefly playing with 13 men during their 34-24 victory at Gloucester.

South African centre Andre Esterhuizen was dismissed for an elbow to the face in the 45th minute and Harlequins soon lost Glen Young to the sin-bin.

But Quins scored 17 points to Gloucester’s 14 in the remainder of the game as they recorded a bonus-point victory in the Premiership.

Gustard said: “Sometimes it’s initially harder to play against 13 men as it takes time to work what adjustments the other team have made in terms of defence.

More of an arm-wrestle

“Andre is a big man and is a physical player but it looked more of an arm-wrestle to me and it took four-and-a-half minutes of replays to make the decision to send him off after their player alerted the referee to it.”

Alex Dombrandt scored two tries for Harlequins, James Chisholm and Nathan Earle the others, with Marcus Smith converting all four and adding a penalty and a drop-goal.

James Hanson crossed twice for Gloucester, Ed Slater also touched down, with Billy Twelvetrees kicking a penalty and a conversion. Jacob Morris added two conversions.

Gustard added: “Danny (Care) kicked superbly, I have known him for 14 years and his kicking is underrated as he’s been outstanding in the last three weeks. Marcus got us in the right areas by knowing when to pass and when to kick and he’s so quick and adept in turning teams around.”

Harlequins skipper Alex Dombrandt said: “We showed great grit and character to win as it’s a tough place to come. It was great to have the fans in as it was a good atmosphere as we knew the game would be very physical.”

Gloucester’s cause was not helped by the continual disruption to their back division.

Chris Harris and Louis Rees-Zammit were away on international duty, Jason Woodward and Danny Cipriani were unavailable through injury and in the match itself, Billy Twelvetrees, Joe Simpson and Lloyd Evans all had to leave the field.

Head coach George Skivington said: “The boys are gutted as coming into this game we were well prepared. And it was a good contest when each side had 15.

“When they went down to 13, we didn’t stick to our systems as there was no need to make the magic pass.

“They managed the game better as we didn’t deal with some well-judged kicks from their half-backs.

“We lost nine players in the last 48 hours and that definitely hurt us. It wasn’t ideal but I won’t use it as an excuse as we needed to adapt better.”

 

Harlequins