Quins’ 13 men hold out for victory that ends Bath revival

Ben Coles

Harlequins finished the match with 13 players but still reeled off a fourth successive Gallagher Premiership win after halting Bath’s recent resurgence. In doing so Quins cut the gap to two points on second-placed Sale before a fortnight’s break for European action.

Bath had won their last three Premiership matches but were behind early when Alex Dombrandt, who will hope to be back in England’s plans by February, opened the scoring with a typical thundering run to score under the posts.

Orlando Bailey hit back with a penalty for Bath but Harlequins’ attack looked sharp. Denied five metres out by a Fergus Lee-warner line-out steal, the visitors were soon back over thanks to Oscar Beard’s dancing feet, cutting inside two Bath defenders for his first league try of the season.

Good work at the breakdown with Miles Reid and Josh Bayliss both winning penalties went unrewarded as Bailey missed both attempts at the posts, to leave Harlequins ahead 12-3 at the break.

Bath started the second half far brighter, Cameron Redpath with a fine offload to release Will Butt who dummied his way over to cut the deficit, with the influential Redpath then putting Ted Hill into space for a break. But a burst from Cadan Murley settled Quins down, earning a penalty under the posts which turned into their third try through Nick David after a pre-planned move involving Dombrandt, Danny Care and Tommaso Allan.

Piers Francis, on for Bailey, answered with three points for Bath but Harlequins were back in control, forcing penalties out of Bath and dominating the scrum as

the hosts clung on. Bath’s maul was overdue for a rumble, but a television match official check ruled they were held up over the line.

Harlequins’ scrum remained impressive, winning a fifth setpiece penalty, but they were failing to capitalise. Instead it was Bath who pressed again through their maul only to be held up for a second time, leaving the game finely poised with Harlequins ahead 19-13 going into the final minutes.

And they seemed set to survive, before a bit of sloppiness at the breakdown and a burst from Joe Cokanasiga earned Bath a penalty with 50 seconds left, and a yellow card for Harlequins’ George Head.

That set off a run of Bath penalties with Harlequins trying to stop the maul, with Jack Kenningham also sin-binned to put the visitors down to 13. But they impressively held Bath out to secure a sixth Premiership win of the season.

“At the end of 80 minutes, considering the amount of mauls and players we had in the bin, that is a courageous effort,” said head coach Tabai Matson, with Quins travelling to South Africa tomorrow to face the Sharks in the Champions Cup.

Johann van Graan, Bath’s head of rugby, said: “We had opportunities to win it twice over the try line and you can’t see a grounding, so it’s one of those games where you say, ‘what if?’”