Harlequins' city slickers relegated in classic comeuppance for dark dealings

Harlequins 22 - Sale 23

Across great swathes of the English union landscape, from Penzance to Newcastle and back again, they are laughing still, the snap and crack of sides splitting asunder drowning out the wailing and gnashing of teeth emerging from the bowels of the sporting mausoleum know as the Stoop Memorial Ground. Harlequins, the team of Will Carling and Brian Moore - of city slickers and daft pastel shirts, of swanky cup runs and sports-car rugby - are down amongst the Otleys and Sedgeley Parks, having spent most of the season conspiring to keep themselves up under false pretences. As comeuppances go, this is a classic.

Within minutes of the final whistle, seasoned Quins-watchers were suggesting that the Premiership might yet be expanded to re-accommodate the relegated Londoners, that a deal with the Rugby Football Union was being thrashed out, that the club chairman, Charles Jillings, was "working on it". These people would do well to wake up and smell the coffee. Francis Baron, the chief executive of the RFU, and Martyn Thomas, the newly elected chairman of the management board, are united in their support for the one-up, one-down system currently in place. Hell will freeze over before they move so much as a square millimetre on the issue.

There has been precious little dignity about Quins this season, and many would question their integrity, too. Rugby union needs many things, not least significant amounts of new investment to underpin what is by its very nature a high-risk business, but it does not need newspaper reports of élite clubs attempting to buy off the teams in National Division One, at least 50 per cent of whom have genuine designs on Premiership status. The Londoners were the most heavily implicated in the dark and dodgy wheeling and dealing, and have never sought to deny their role. At the weekend, they got theirs.

This is not to suggest that their failure to save themselves in legitimate fashion - a failure so narrow it could be measured by the single inch that denied Jeremy Staunton a match-winning penalty with a minute left on the clock - was not painful to behold. Quins' best players, the flanker Andre Vos and and No 8 Tony Diprose, could not conceivably have given more of themselves.

Will Greenwood, the World Cup-winning centre and the most celebrated player on the staff, said: "My overriding feeling is one of letting people down. I'm off to have a drink with the supporters, always assuming they want to have a drink with me."

As ever, the admirable Diprose was the most articulate - and the most honest - of summarisers. "What will happen? I don't think any of us know," he admitted. "I'm still under contract and given the option, I'd love to stay here and help take the side back into the Premiership. But in a relegation situation, contracts tend not to mean a great deal. Money is going to be tighter, obviously, and as this isn't the cheapest part of the world in which to live, it won't be viable for people to play for three-and-a-half grand a year. It's a mess, isn't it? There again, I started my career in the Second Division with Saracens, and if there hadn't been a gateway into the top league, I might not have done what I've done in the game. There are arguments both ways, but I can't say relegation is wrong."

Mark Evans, who has been combining the duties of chief executive and head coach since Quins last found themselves in trapdoor territory some four years ago, takes the opposite view. In his view, relegation is not so much wrong as evil. He might have taken the scattergun approach on Saturday, not least because he has pushed through some major redevelopment work at the Stoop that suddenly has the look of the white elephant about it, but he chose to keep his powder dry. "My opinions are very well known, but it would look appallingly like sour grapes if I entered into this debate at this point," he said, rightly.

But the facts remain. This catastrophe will cost Quins somewhere near £5m, despite a so-called parachute payment of £1.5m from the Premiership coffers, and with a £6m loan on the new stand staring out at Evans from the spreadsheet on his computer, cuts will have to be made. Had his side built on their three-try performance in the first half - the initial strike from Staunton was brilliantly conceived, as was George Harder's pass to Gavin Duffy for the third - the entire staff would have stayed in a job. As it is, the employment exchange beckons.

"We never quite shook them off, did we?" lamented Diprose, referring to an off-colour Sale who nevertheless contrived to deny Quins full value for their early desperation-fuelled superiority. Unlike the unfortunate Staunton, the visiting outside-half Charlie Hodgson looked wholly incapable of missing a kick at goal. (Ironically, he rarely looks like landing one when he plays for England over the road at Twickenham). Staunton managed three from six, Hodgson five from five. There you have it.

Sale, in dangerously close proximity when they should have been miles out of range, finally put themselves in front when Mark Cueto, every inch a Lions wing despite Sir Clive Woodward's views to the contrary, scored a try out of nothing from fully 50 metres.

"I was a wing myself," said Phillipe Saint-André, the former France captain and current Sale coach. "I know one when I see one, and Mark is a man who smells the line." Saint-André said something else that was absolutely right.

"This is a sad day for rugby in England, seeing Harlequins relegated," he acknowledged. "They are a club with a history, and in France, we know more of them than perhaps any other team. But it is also a beautiful day, because this is the drama that rugby gives us."

Many will have seen it as comedy, others as farce, some as tragedy. Whatever the truth of it, it was pure theatre, and without it there is no sport worthy of the name.

Harlequins: Tries Staunton, Hayter, Duffy; Conversions Staunton 2; Penalty Staunton. Sale: Tries Hanley, Cueto; Conversions Hodgson 2; Penalties Hodgson 3.

Harlequins: G Duffy (T Williams, 72); G Harder, W Greenwood, M Deane, S Keogh (D James, 40); J Staunton, S So'oialo; M Worsley (C Jones, 51), J Hayter, J Dawson, R Winters, S Miall (J Evans, 51), N Easter (L Sherriff, 75), A Vos (capt), A Diprose.

Sale: M Cueto; O Ripol, J Robinson (capt), R Todd, S Hanley; C Hodgson, B Redpath; A Sheridan, S Bruno (A Titterrell, 45), B Stewart (S Turner, 51), I Fernandez Lobbe (C Jones, 45), D Schofield, J White, J Carter, S Chabal (M Lund, 62).

Referee: D Pearson (Northumberland).