They left it late, just as they are going to have to if they are to make it into Europe, but this win sees Harlequins’ hopes still just alive. They move to within four points of Sale, who are yet to play this weekend.
The Sharks are in seventh, which may be enough to qualify for the play-offs for the Champions Cup next season. Gloucester are more or less out of that race now, but they may yet deny whoever finishes seventh by winning the Challenge Cup, thus leap-frogging into the play-offs themselves.
It seemed as if they had done enough to win here anyway, seven points up early in the second half, then four points up against 14 men with an hour gone, but two yellow cards in as many minutes in the final quarter did for them. Quins scored twice against the 13 men to bound out of jail. And much of this game was a jail for them, struggling particularly at scrum time in the first half.
Matt Shields, plucked from the obscurity of National League One this season, was given a start at tighthead for Quins, but Gloucester is a formidable proposition for even the most experienced front-row forward.
That said, it was Joe Marler who ended up with the game’s first yellow card – there were four in total – just before half-time. By then, Quins’ early 5-0 lead had been turned into a 13-11 deficit.
Asaeli Tikoirotuma was looking the liveliest of Quins’ backs. Danny Care needs no second invitation to take a penalty quickly, and the prospect of the Fijian outside him was certainly too much to resist in the 11th minute. He tapped, Tikoirotuma went, and his sweet pass sent Charlie Walker away for the game’s first try. There were only a handful of line-outs in that first period, but Quins could not avoid the need to scrum.
Time and again they were marched back, and a Gloucester scrum on the half-hour was no different from any of the others. The ball came back loosely, but James Hook was able to turn and gather off the floor then waltz clean through the Quins midfield, sending Billy Meakes to the posts for that half-time lead. Gloucester withdrew John Afoa at half-time, and with him went some of their menace in the scrum.
When Marler returned early in the second half, it was to stand firm at a defensive five-metre scrum, but Hook and Meakes combined again, this time to send Charlie Sharples into the corner. Quins had whittled that new seven-point lead down to just the one within 10 minutes, but their cause looked unlikely when Jack Clifford saw yellow card No2 for a late hit on Sharples, and Greig Laidlaw landed his third penalty. That, though, was just the start of the yellow-card fun.
With 12 minutes to go, Quins sent a penalty to the corner and drove the line-out, coaxing Gloucester into their first yellow, for Ross Moriarty.
Quins did the same again, and Sharples’s deliberate knock-on out wide resulted in the second in as many minutes. So Quins went a third time, and Marland Yarde was driven over in the corner to earn them the lead with 10 minutes left.
They were restored to 15 shortly afterwards and made their two-man advantage tell. Chris Robshaw broke the line, and Tikoirotuma and Ugo Monye sent in Ollie Lindsay-Hague. In the dying minutes Dan Robson replied with a fine score for Gloucester, which at least earned them the bonus point. But if Gloucester can prevail in their home Challenge Cup semi-final against Exeter next weekend, then, in the final here at the start of May, they will leap-frog the race for seventh anyway.
