Harlequins have been one of the teams who have needed to improve on a few seasons’ poor performances. Under former England defence coach Paul Gustard, they have made leaps and bounds, and now look like a team worth keeping an eye on. This try shows you just how much skill and pace they have in their team, which has made them contenders again, albeit with an outside chance of breaking into the top four this season.
Here, we see how full-back Ross Chisholm has received the ball from exciting young England fly-half Marcus Smith, and has immediately looked to see where the space is to run through the Gloucester defence. The Cherry and Whites have not looked comfortable defending this season, so it’s unsurprising that there is such a big gap in their back line.
Chisholm, once he sees this, makes a curved run through the gap, dodging attempted tackles on the way through. However, he has still got one defender ahead of him in this image who could tackle him and stop his run.
To ensure that he gets past this defender, Chisholm dummies a pass towards his winger on the outside, as you can see here, and this has the desired effect. The Gloucester defender makes a small movement towards the wing, as the light blue arrow shows, and this ensures that Chisholm can get through and go over the try line, as the red arrow illustrates. You can see from his body position too how he has moved towards the wing initially, and then quickly switched to go through the middle, catching the Gloucester defender out.
This was a try scored through great awareness from the Quins full-back, and his pace helped him to get through the gap before Gloucester closed it down and stopped him getting over the try line.
