Dan Luger has not had the chance to win many matches on his return this season but the injury-jinxed England wing saved this game in a heart-stopping finish in Reading yesterday.
When Luger charged down Barry Everitt's attempted conversion of an equalising try by Michael Horak some eight minutes into stoppage time, he may just have provided Harlequins with the salvation of their Premiership season. For while Irish's third draw of the campaign helped them into second spot, more importantly Quins' third draw hauled them off the bottom of the table.
Quins had already been beaten twice by their former tenants this term, a Premiership win in the first game that set the tone for their season of struggle and in the Powergen Cup semi-final last month. Irish might have had one eye on next Saturday's Twickenham final but denied the seven changes they made from the side that beat Bath in midweek came from resting players.
"We had to take into account the physical battering the players had taken against Bath. It is ludicrous to play two games of this intensity in five days and we had one training session on Friday when Barry Everitt developed a calf injury. For us a draw was a fair result in a poor game," said Conor O'Shea, Irish's director of rugby.
Everitt, the Exiles' top scorer with 420 points before yesterday, was brought on 15 minutes into the second half. He landed one penalty and would normally have backed himself to convert Horak's try even though he was close to the left hand touchline. But as he drew back and hesitated, Luger raced 25 metres to charge down the kick and the final whistle blew.
"I'd noted in earlier games that Everitt had hesitated a little with his kicks and luckily one or two of our players did too," said Mark Evans, the Quins chief executive who is coaching the side at this nerve-shredding time. "I'm not delighted but I'm not devastated either, but we are still two points better off than we were this morning."
With Quins' only home game against now-bottom Leeds, they can save themselves even though they have played a game more than the Yorkshire men. This was a defiant performance by the visitors who crucially lost their own goalkicking No10 Paul Burke at the interval after he twisted an ankle.
But David Slemen, his replacement who had been confined to two European games against Castres and Bridgend, grasped the nettle. The son of Mike Slemen, the former England and Lions wing, has his dad's nous. He kicked two superb drop goals, the second from inside the Irish half five minutes from time that seemed to have settled the match even before Ben Gollings struck a third drop goal five minutes into stoppage time.
Then came Horaks' late, late strike. The full-back had earlier engineered a try for his wing Nnamdi Ezulike on the stroke of half-time. It was a day when the referee Tony Spreadbury's stopwatch had to be as synchronised as Luger's thinking.
London Irish: Horak; Ezulike, Appleford, Venter, Bishop; Brown (Everitt, 54), Edwards; Hatley (Wheatley, 60), Kirke (Drotske, 46), Halford, Delaney (capt), Williams, Gustard (Cockle, 66), Danaher, Strudwick.
Tries : Ezulike, Horak. Con: Brown. Pens: Brown, Everitt.
Sin-bin: Gustard, 46.
Harlequins: Gollings; Jewell, Greenwood, Bell (Greenstock, 57), Luger; Burke (Slemen, h-t), Howell; Leonard, Wood (capt), Olver, Morgan (Davison, 62), Codling, White-Cooper, Tiatia, Winters (Sheriff, 73).
Pens: Burke 2, Slemen. Drop goals: Slemen 2, Gollings.
Referee: T Spreadbury (Somerset).
Attendance: 6,803.
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