Harlequins to take player-led approach over Six Nations returnees

Harlequins’ senior coach Jason Gilmore says the struggling PREM club will take everything into consideration before reintegrating their Six Nations players back into their matchday squad.

The struggling London club is not obliged to rest any of their three England stars, Marcus Smith, Cadan Murley and Chandler Cunningham-South, under the Elite Player Squad agreement, as none of them featured in all of England’s matchday 23s during the five rounds of the Six Nations. Had they done so, they’d have been required to be rested for one week of the next three.

Smith was used off the bench, to varying degrees, in four of the five games but was dropped for the 31-20 defeat to Scotland in Edinburgh in round three, while Murley missed the first three rounds before playing the full 80 minutes in the games against Italy and France.

Cunningham-South has been used even more sparingly. He spent most of the championship kicking his heels, having had just two five-minute cameos in the final two rounds. It is a situation he has become accustomed to over the last 18 months.

Harlequins also had Jarrod Evans and George Turner away with Wales and Scotland. But now all the players are back under the same roof and looking to play their part in making sure the run-in to the season is a lot more successful than what has happened to date.

At present, Harlequins go into Saturday’s ninth versus eighth game against Gloucester at the Twickenham Stoop five points ahead of bottom-of-the-table Newcastle Red Bulls, after just one win to their name.

When relegation was a real possibility, such dire times would have seen clubs put all their best players out on the park in a desperate attempt to beat the drop. But with that jeopardy gone, player welfare can take predecence.

“It’s a tricky one, not all the boys met the threshold; they have got to be in the matchday 23 across all the internationals. But they’ve been in camp for six weeks, training at a high intensity, travelling, and the only bit they don’t do is play the game on the weekend,” said Gilmore.

“So, I think workload-wise, they have still done pretty much the same, and I still think we need to be mindful of whilst they still haven’t played, they still haven’t had a break, going straight from the PREM to the Six Nations.

“Whether they get the week in the first three or its a little bit later in the season, we are very conscious of that. A lot goes into it: how many minutes they’ve played, particularly in the last three to four weeks, are they banged up, emotionally?” he added.

“I’d imagine those England boys will come back a little bit flat. They put a lot of work into that France game, and to not get the result. So, how you look after their week, particularly at the front end, is going to be important.

“I’ve had a chat with a couple of them today (Monday); we have given them today off, and then the guys that will play this week, they will reintegrate tomorrow.

“We are managing all of our boys. We have got our thoughts on it. But I think it is allowing the boys to have an input into that as well,” he continued.

“It is important that the boys take ownership over it, too, because if they don’t want to play this week and they’re tired and we make them play, they are not going to play well on the weekend. So we’re guided by the boys on how they are feeling, and also for them, they’ll want to reconnect with family during their week off as well.

“There is probably a bit of give and take between the player and the club and it is also about how many minutes they’ve played; some boys will do the whole Six Nations but not play a game.

“Emotionally they are probably pretty empty from having to do that and disappointed that they haven’t played, and then you’ve got other boys who’ve played 60-80 minutes of Test rugby and physically they are exhausted. It’s tricky.”

Gilmore is in his second season at Quins, having first arrived from Australia as defence coach. Danny Wilson’s abrupt departure on the eve of the current campaign saw him step up to lead the coaching team, a position that hasn’t been easy at the best of times given the team’s struggles and all the noise surrounding who the next head coach might be.

“It does get tough. But I have had this before at the ‘Tahs, so I’ve got experience in terms of knowing what gets run through the media,” he said.

“You are adopting a team that have values and behaviours that have already been established under the previous regime, obviously, so you are certainly on the go trying to change some small things that you know will work. But, ultimately, if they are long term it is little bit more difficult with the pressure of games and Europe and all that sort of stuff, that’s more a pre-season change that will need to be made.

“I am all good, I am old enough to know what goes on in the world; my main priority is to make sure the boys’ head spaces are in a good spot, the staff are nice and tight and we can produce some reasonable results in what’s left in the year.”

Gilmore, who confirmed he is under contract for next year, has three on-field aims for the remainder of the season, which includes a Round of 16 home tie against Sale Sharks in the Champions Cup.

“In Europe, we want to dream big and get as far as we can,” he said.

“In terms of the PREM, collecting as many points as we can. We wanted to finish up the ladder obviously, and probably, just as importantly, we are striving really hard to find our game in this next block of three to four months.

“If we can hit the off-season in good shape in terms of how we want to play across all the disciplines and have improved, I think that would be a good marker for us.”

As for their most immediate challenge, the visit of Gloucester, Gilmore expects both teams will be giving it a good crack.

“First and foremost, Gloucester is going to provide a good challenge for us. We are back at home, we have got some of our internationals back, and we have got to rest a couple as well, so we have got a plan around that in the first couple of weeks. The next three weeks are pretty exciting.

“No doubt they’ll be saying the same thing because we’ve had similar seasons, so no doubt it is going to be a tight contest. Looking at the weather, it is going to be a quick, dry track at the Stoop, two teams who’ll want to use the ball, so there is going to be plenty of ball movement, plenty of positivity around it.

“We’ll know with their back row they’ll come hard at our breakdown, so we have to make sure we deal with that and, hopefully, it is refereed in the same manner.”

Having missed out on ther PREM Cup semi-finals, Harlequins used some of their downtime for a bit of team bonding down in Cornwall, which included a friendly against the Cornish Pirates.

“We were pretty happy with our PREM Cup, block two,” said Gilmore. “Our transition coach mentioned last week that we debuted 25 players under the age of 23 across those eight games which is great for us.

“Probably the standout in the last block has been Josh Bellamy, at full-back, he has really lit it up.

“He has played a lot of England U20s, and he got his opportunity. He would have debuted for us (in the league) this weekend but he broke his thumb last week, uinfortunately, so he’ll miss his chance in the short-term.”