Sport is funny, isn’t it? Just when you think it’s desperate and dire and you need to start finding a parachute, sport hands you the controls and says, “No, you’re alright, just give it another go.”

Such evacuative thoughts were the Stoop collectively thinking ahead of their Champions Cup game versus the Stormers. Pre match, amongst fans, there was much intaking of breath and wincing. 

But come the time that balls were being thrown about in anger, all of that angst seemed to slip away. Crisis what crisis? The players chorused gleefully. 

This was Quins back at their imperial best. And not just that, everything went for them. Balls bounced up like favourite memories, passes popped, moves clicked, anything the men in four quarters sought to do, was done. 

This was not a full strength Stormers side but it was still good. World Cup winning Springboks were present and correct. Not that any could do much about anything. They seemed surplus to requirements. This was Quins walking around the boutique picking out whatever clothes they liked. 

Let’s start with the stylish back row. I’ve seen Dombrandt strut this well but it was a few years back. Kenningham was as irksome as he’s ever been. At one point I thought there were at least three of him on the pitch. He’d steal ball at the breakdown and then be on the end of a subsequent backs’ move. Cunningham South was the perfect foil to them both. Boisterous and bullying his way through any contact. God, it was good. 

The backs were razor sharp too. Northmore cut lines like a Colombian drug lord and everyone else seemed to know where he was going. Murley, Green and David all benefitted from a Stormers midfield that appeared to have left all its doors and windows wide open. Quins plundered from 50, 60, 70 yards. It didn’t become a question of if, but how. In the midfield, Bryn Bradley could be the answer to a question many Quins’ fans have asked.

Laurie Dalrymple had fronted up to the Debentures lounge before the game and suggested that things weren’t quite as bad as people were making out. That yes, it wasn’t ideal but no one needed to throw the baby out with the bath water. 

And so he was proven right. The Stormers, unbeaten in ten straight fixtures this season, could only stand and watch. Almost fifty points were amassed before the Cape Town outfit registered anything of their own. 

The Quins handling at times was sublime. Time and again the ball looped up only to be taken by a home player who seemed to have been sent a text as to where to be and when. Players moved in tandem like it was 2021. I half expected Louis Lynagh to latch onto one of the grubber kicks. It was that wonderful. 

The energy and fervour the whole squad played with, was noticeable. We were told by Oscar Beard in hospitality before the game that the players were hurting. And didn’t it show? It was easy to spot the fury with which tries were being celebrated. A guttural cry accompanying the angry fist pump. This was the heat that Quins had been cooking with all week and it glowed red hot on matchday. Right up to the last moments of the game, Stormers players were rocked backwards in the tackle. The wind taken out of lungs and sails. And as Jarrod Evans sauntered over for the final Quins score, those in Blue and White could only flail and slump their shoulders.  

Toby Booth was a little more sangfroid in post-match interview. He claimed to have been stopped by a supporter on his way up to the Legends lounge who had said to him, “it’s just one game…”

“And it is,” continued Booth, who is not long into his tenure in West London. “But we were lucky today. Not in that we didn’t deserve to win, we did. But lucky with the way some things went our way. That has been missing of late. When you’re down, you’re down. But things went our way today… We need to find consistency. We were good for 50 minutes v Sale, for 15 minutes against Bristol… there’s no side like Quins when it comes to broken field running and we earned that right today. We played well, but it is just one week.”

One week is a long time in sport but it will be difficult not to suggest that whatever Quins had lost they have found it in the Champions Cup. It was like catching up with an old friend. The question is, can Quins convince them to stick around?