How to solve a problem like Harlequins - Andy Goode

It may sound like hyperbole this early in the season but Sunday’s visit to Sale might just be Harlequins’ biggest game since they last reached the play-offs four years ago.

Since then they have been on a steady downward curve and Saturday’s embarrassing defeat at Kingsholm, their worst in the league for 26 years, may not prove to be the nadir as it’s hard to see where a win is coming from in the PREM until at least the New Year.

They could raise the level for their cup final in the London derby or catch Exeter or Leicester on an off day but their squad doesn’t compare well on paper and the fixture at Newcastle, who have levelled up along with a couple of other teams who didn’t fare well last season, on January 2 looks massive already.

Gloucester finished just a point ahead of Quins in 2025/26 but they looked like they were on a different planet at the weekend and the responsibility for that has to sit with those at the very top of the club.

While the Cherry and Whites struggled badly at times in the last campaign, you could see a strategy, a game plan, an investment in youth and then came the appointment of Chris Boyd as technical director and Rob Burgess as general manager and a sprinkling of stardust in their recruitment.

In contrast, Harlequins’ only major summer signing was George Furbank in a position that they had more than adequate cover in already and their “exhaustive global search” for a new head honcho resulted in them sticking with interim boss Jason Gilmore.

They did hire Robbie Deans as performance director but the 67-year-old, who has been working in Japan for a dozen years since his stint as Australia coach, has no experience of the PREM and will only actually spend 12 weeks a year on the ground at Quins.

He wasn’t there at Kingsholm on Saturday, while the camera focused on Boyd in the Gloucester coaching box quite a bit as you could see his imprint all over the hosts’ attack, but this isn’t down to him.

Quins’ head of recruitment, Ed Spokes, has been in that role for a decade and been working at the club since 2003 and Laurie Dalrymple has been CEO since 2019. Ultimately, the buck has to stop with him.

He oversaw the PREM title triumph in 2021 but in the last few years Wilco Louw, Joe Marchant, Andre Esterhuizen, Will Collier, Louis Lynagh, Joe Marler, Danny Care, Joe Launchbury, Stephan Lewies, Nathan Jibulu and more have left and not been properly replaced.

Add to that, Will Joseph and Will Trenholm, who joined Gloucester from Harlequins last season and were two of the standout players at the weekend and it adds insult to injury for fans.

Both of the back-up fly-halves, Jamie Benson and Jarrod Evans, left for Ulster and Cardiff in the off-season so 23-year-old Connor Slevin has had to make the step up from Chinnor and Richmond to the top flight in Marcus Smith’s absence.

Quins’ star man might pull a few rabbits out of hats on his return from a broken finger but he’s going to be missing for parts of the season and he can’t win too many games playing on the back foot.

The men from south west London conceded 17 penalties on Saturday, five of those at the scrum, and their starting forwards had a combined total of just 20 carries, while Furbank and Slevin had 25 between them.

Of course, they were chasing the game from early on but you have to earn the right to play and they look woefully short up front, the changing of the entire front row just after half-time making no difference whatsoever.

Fin Baxter is clearly a big loss in that department and it’s a shame that Alex Dombrandt will be missing for most of the season with his ACL injury but every team has to contend with injuries, Leicester’s absentee list is well into double figures already and they still ground out a win.

Sport is cyclical, particularly in ones with a salary cap, but Harlequins have finished sixth, sixth, seventh and ninth in the last four campaigns and won well under half of their league games since they last reached the play-offs.

There were a few positive elements against Bath in the opening round but it isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to a 48-0 loss to state that it’s hard to make a case for them finishing outside the bottom two again this season.

The truth is that they should have reached the lowest ebb of their cycle a couple of years ago and it shouldn’t have been as low as this. Recruitment sometimes does take two or three windows or summers to get right but there isn’t any evidence they have started yet.

Jason Gilmore wrote off last season as early as Boxing Day after a bad defeat on the road at Sale so surely that should have been the point at which they hit the reset button but it’s difficult to see what has been done over the past nine months to really address the core problems.

The head coach has to take a fair bit of heat, as he is doing, and the players are under pressure after the manner of the defeat at Kingsholm but Harlequins’ issues run much deeper than that.

It’s impossible to conclude anything other than there has been mismanagement or serious oversights at the very top and there may be a bit of pain still to come for Quins fans.

Chief executive Laurie Dalrymple might be the man with all the questions to answer but the players have to stand up and be counted now, starting by showing a lot more heart and fight even if they don’t win in Salford on Sunday.