O'Shea eager to maintain level of intensity

HARLEQUINS’ DIRECTOR of rugby Conor O’Shea and his coaching staff challenged the players to guarantee two core constituents in performance terms, ambition and physicality, ahead of their Heineken Cup clash against Toulouse Le Stadium on Sunday.

The upshot was a stunning 31-24 victory, exorcising the disappointment of the previous weekend when the four-time European champions, Toulouse, took home a win from London.

The disappointment for the Harlequins players in the first contest of a double header between the clubs was acute, not wholly because of losing but the manner of the defeat.

As he took time out from preparing for an A team match last night, O’Shea sifted through a remarkable afternoon in the London club’s history.

“It’s gone and forgotten,” he laughed. “We spoke beforehand about what we needed to do as a team; that we had to show ambition and be physical.

“We set goals before the match and then it’s very simple to ascertain whether you deliver on what you say you are going to do.

“Any team is judged on results but winning largely follows getting the performance right. The players were very down from the week before because they hadn’t done themselves justice.

“The fact that they were outmuscled hurt them but the beauty of playing a double header (against the same opponents the following week) is that you get to have a crack off them again immediately.

“We identified areas in which we had to improve and one of those was our line speed (in defence). Energy ebbs and flows in a game and you have to be prepared for that.

“You’re not going to dominate (a team like Toulouse) for long periods and you have to be able to weather the pressure when it comes on; and then have the ability to respond.

“Experience teaches good teams to ride out the tough times in a game. You look at a team like Munster and their facility to pull though. There are times when you think, ‘how the hell are they still in the game.’

“You have to accept that you are going to be on the receiving end and you have to hang in there, knowing that you will get chances. It’s then about having the wherewithal to convert them.”

O’Shea knows that blemishes remained in performance terms but the team held true to the pre-game undertaking and refused to buckle even when Toulouse replenished their stock of internationals with players of the same calibre or better from the bench.

Harlequins in contrast were missing their front line centre partnership, George Lowe and Jordan Turner Hall and prop Joe Marler to choose but three absentees.

There is no doubt that last year’s victory over Munster at Thomond Park en route to winning the Amlin Challenge Cup final has greatly assisted in developing a harder mental edge amongst the players.

It gave them to confidence to play the expansive patterns that define them as a team in the last year or so.

O’Shea explained: “Toulouse play, Leinster play; you have to have ambition to play to go places in the tournament.

“It’s easier to contract your patterns, harder to expand them. We want to have a game that challenges our opponents when we get it right.

“We got the bounces here and there that we didn’t get the previous week.

“Little things that went against us went in our favour this time. The guys stepped up and deserve to enjoy the moment but it is our next job that will be judged on. There are no grey areas in sport: if you win you’re great, if you lose you’re terrible.

“We now have to focus on the (Aviva) Premiership because we have three tough games coming up starting with a sell-out against Saracens at Twickenham. We then travel away to Exeter (Chiefs) and Northampton (Saints) before we can refocus on Europe ahead on the game with Gloucester.

“The challenge for us is to try and bring that level of intensity to all those matches.”