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Director of rugby John Kingston is to leave Harlequins at the end of the season despite agreeing a contract extension in January
Director of rugby John Kingston is to leave Harlequins at the end of the season despite agreeing a contract extension in January. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Director of rugby John Kingston is to leave Harlequins at the end of the season despite agreeing a contract extension in January. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

No surprise as fallen giants Harlequins call time on John Kingston

This article is more than 5 years old

It is three years since Quins, Northampton or Bath made the Premiership play-offs and anxiety is growing at these traditionally big clubs

At this stage of the domestic rugby season the table seldom lies. It is not enough simply to blame under-achievement on injuries or match officials or the weather. If, after seven months of league rugby, a high-profile, well-backed club is wallowing in lower-table mediocrity the only remaining place to look is the bathroom mirror.

Perhaps the defining aspect of this year’s Premiership season has been the unusual number of big sides conducting major inquests with three weekends of the campaign left to play. The bottom three clubs – London Irish, Worcester and Northampton – had already parted company with their directors of rugby this season and the announcement that John Kingston is to leave ninth-placed Harlequins at the end of the season has maintained the sorry sequence.

Partly it is a sign of the times, the inevitable flip side of a league which grows more competitive – if not necessarily of a higher quality – each year. Not everyone can make the play-offs and European Champions’ Cup qualification can never be guaranteed. That said, the decline in fortunes of Quins, Northampton and Bath is striking: the last time any of them made the last four was in 2015 and their supporters’ patience is wearing thin.

The mood around the Stoop, in particular, had darkened to such an extent in the wake of their 35-5 home defeat to the bottom side London Irish on Saturday that Kingston’s departure was no surprise. Even before it was announced, the club’s ex-England captain Will Carling was among those who felt something had to give.

“Painfully obvious that some tough decisions have to be taken before key players start to leave,” Carling wrote on Twitter. “Once down that road attracting great players becomes almost impossible.”

Given the contract extensions awarded to the coaching trio of Kingston, Mark Mapletoft and Graham Rowntree only in January, these are uncomfortable times for the club’s board. A team containing experienced England internationals such as Chris Robshaw, Mike Brown and Danny Care, two British & Irish Lions props and an assortment of talented youngsters should not, in normal circumstances, be disappearing without trace at home against an Exiles side who had a bonus point wrapped up after an hour.

While injuries may have disrupted Quins’ season, six defeats in seven league games this year cannot be wholly explained away by last summer’s retirement of their high-class fly-half Nick Evans – now the attack coach – or a lack of consistent forward turbo-thrust. You would have to go a long way in rugby, however, to meet three more genuine rugby men than Kingston, Mapletoft and Rowntree. Where, too, is the surefire alternative saviour on his – or her – white charger? Coach sackings are becoming as much of an occupational hazard in professional rugby as football but, equally, there are examples of shrewd recruitment and a couple of dressing-room departures achieving more than flipping over the entire Monopoly board.

As Northampton, champions as recently as 2014, are discovering, change can be equally painful. They also had a reasonable side out on paper at the weekend but ended up conceding nine tries to Saracens at Franklin’s Gardens, including 48 unanswered points in the second half. In four games against Sarries this season, two of them in Europe, the Saints conceded 237 points and scored just 64; it has not much mattered whether Jim Mallinder, Alan Gaffney or Alan Dickens has been in charge.

Todd Blackadder is struggling to revive Bath’s fortunes. Photograph: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images

If the transitional Saints are banking on their incoming Kiwi director of rugby Chris Boyd to ensure an automatic turnaround, they should study Todd Blackadder’s stint at Bath. The former All Black captain is another man of integrity who knows the secrets of winning consistently from his time at the Crusaders. Like many before him, however, he is finding success elusive at Bath, now in eighth place and looking unlikely to make the top six never mind the top four.

Again, as at Quins and Saints, there is a sense of a club adding up to less than the sum of its parts. Talk to some within the Bath dressing-room and they even wonder aloud about their palatial training headquarters at Farleigh House, designed to be the envy of every other club in the world. The long winter has left the training pitch out in front of the stately home heavy and its unprotected rural position leaves it particularly exposed whenever the wind blows.

Injuries, either way, have been Bath’s constant companion and unless they manage to conjure a win at Saracens on Sunday their chances of making even the top six will be all but extinguished. The ever-reliable Matt Banahan is off to Gloucester, new midfield recruit Jamie Roberts has a serious amount of rugby miles on the clock and up the road will be promoted Bristol, potentially a much stronger proposition this time around. The current top four of Exeter, Saracens, Wasps and Leicester will be tough to shift, Newcastle and Sale are growing stronger year on year and Gloucester under Johan Ackermann are also heading in the right direction. For Quins and the other fallen giants of English rugby, recapturing former glories could take a while.

Owens puts Folau in his place

At some stage, hopefully, the Wallaby full-back Israel Folau will have his attention drawn to a heartfelt column in the Western Mail written by the Welsh referee Nigel Owens. The latter, as a gay man in rugby, was dispirited to read of Folau’s views that homosexuals were destined for “hell” unless they repented of their sins, a stance that has also angered the Wallabies’ sponsor Qantas. “If you really are a Christian then surely you should respect people who are different to who you are,” Owens wrote. “It’s not your sexuality that should define you as a person but the content of your character in being the person that you truly are.” As so often Owens is spot-on, particularly in a season when two other high-profile players, Mathieu Bastareaud and Denny Solomona, have also been found guilty of homophobic slurs. Homophobia has absolutely no place in rugby or society, regardless of hemisphere or religious persuasion.

One to watch

The Commonwealth Games Sevens. Even by Fiji’s remarkable standards something special is potentially brewing: could the Fijian men become the first nation to hold the Olympic, Commonwealth, World Series and Hong Kong sevens titles at the same time? After sweeping Kenya aside in Sunday’s final in Hong Kong under the command of their Welsh coach Gareth Baber, the Pacific island kings are now seeking a double on the Gold Coast having not featured at the past two Commonwealth Games. “Yeah we are being a little bit greedy but there’s a desire to win both,” says Baber. Competition will be tough, with other nations having rested most of their best players for the Games, but the flying Fijians usually find a way.

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