WINNING START: London Irish 15 - 20 Harlequins

Another season started and did so with an unconvincing victory by Harlequins over an ineffective London Irish side by 15 – 20 at Twickenham.

Harlequins started out with both pace and intent. With the bulk of the possession and territory in Harlequins’ favour, the penalty count against the Exiles began to mount. They were penalised seven times in the first twenty minutes and were fortunate that Nick Evans was having a rare bad kicking day.

After an early miss the first points came from the fly half’s boot and soon after a long pass from Brown gave Monye the opportunity to score the first try. Evans conversion hit the post but went through for a ten point lead in as many minutes. A further penalty attempt brought a further miss.

Two successful penalties from Geraghty were all that London Irish could muster in the first half. For Quins Evans added another three points before Ollie Lindsay-Hague was set running past the inept tackle attempt of Topsy Ojo for their second try. The conversion completed the scoring for the first half with the interval score 6 – 20.

The second half might have been from a totally different match as the balance changed. Where the Exiles had failed to penetrate the Quins’ twenty-two in the first half they were now getting the better of the possession of the ball and Quins were forced to defend. Yellow cards for Marler and for Sinckler, for dangerous tackles, reduced Quins to thirteen men for several minutes. The accurate boot of Geraghty whittled away at Quins’ lead with three successful kicks.

With four minutes remaining, Evans missed his fourth penalty attempt and failed to deprive the Exiles of a losing bonus point. Quins easily held on to win. They will need to make substantial improvement by their next outing on Friday evening against Saracens.