IF ONE SINGLE QUALITY EMERGED from Harlequins’ year spent — in relative terms — in rugby’s backwaters, it was loyalty. The loyalty not only of players but of supporters and sponsors, all of whom could have walked away from a club relegated on the final weekend of the 2004-05 Premiership season but chose not to.
It is not a fashionable quality in sport these days, when so many competitors are deemed to move clubs for the biggest pay-day but it is one that Harlequins and rugby in general should cherish. It also speaks well for the organisation which, under the careful nurturing over the past six years of Mark Evans, chief executive but also at one time or another director of rugby and head coach, Harlequins have become.
It is immensely important to the club that NEC UK, the longest-standing sponsor in the professional club game, decided to extend its links to an eleventh year. True, the Harlequins brand is a strong one worldwide, but such consistency of purpose merits reward — as does that of Leeds Building Society, who have stuck by Leeds Tykes this season even though the Yorkshire club have also suffered relegation.
The work Harlequins have done in the community also ensured that the fans never lost faith: tears wept when Harlequins lost to Sale Sharks in April 2005 and went down turned into support that ensured average gates at the Twickenham Stoop in National Division One of about 8,800 and after promotion and the recruitment of players like Paul Volley, the new captain, has now created a record turnover in season tickets of close to 6,000. There was a quid pro quo here. The day they went down, the best-known Harlequins players — Will Greenwood, Tony Diprose, Andre Vos — committed themselves to digging the club out of trouble. Whether that played its part with the fans or whether they would have stayed true is a matter for debate but there is an obvious correlation.
“It’s all of a piece,” Evans said. “Sport is and it isn’t a business, because there’s that emotional element as well. You have to keep all your stakeholders involved, the players, the fans, the staff and the commercial partners.”
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He admits to one or two “hairy” moments in the weeks immediately following relegation but within a couple of months the wheels on the bandwagon were moving forward once more. A new director of rugby, Dean Richards, the iconic former England No 8, a new coach in Andy Friend, links with the Harlequins rugby league club, new facilities in the Lexus Stand that give Harlequins a capacity of 12,600 — which will grow to 14,200 if plans for a new south stand receive approval.
“The year away tested our resilience as much as anything,” Evans, a long-term opponent of automatic relegation, said. “I don’t think we needed to go through it to show the club had great heart and soul but perhaps it proved that to some people outside the club.
“The financial side of the club isn’t as strong as it would have been had we stayed in the Premiership but we are in a stronger financial position than two years ago.
“Relegation isn’t a death sentence but that doesn’t make the principle right. The Leeds experience this season will be interesting (the Tykes have lost far more players than Harlequins and their fan base is smaller but I still think relegation mitigates against growth.”
It is his contention that, outside Leicester and Northampton, the clubs with the biggest attendances, the biggest turnovers and the most consistent profit-makers in the Premiership, Harlequins are as soundly based as any. During the first five years that Evans, once a dyed-in-the-wool Saracen, was at the Stoop, he operated with a limited playing budget because Harlequins did not generate enough money off the pitch.
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“We worked hard to change that and, just when we were prepared to make the big shift financially, we went down,” he said. “That had never happened to a club like Quins. They used to be so sure of their place in the world — any tag you care to mention, glamorous, City, dilettante, champagne, fancy Dans, establishment, could be applied to them but after professionalism arrived, they lost many of their advantages and lost their way.”
The reputation still clings, of course, because reputations once won are hard to change, but Evans believes the club he runs now is far removed from the one he found in 2000. “What we have to do now is grow the club so that we can re-invest in the team and if you have patient owners — which we have — if you can take the fan base along with you, that can be achieved.
“I think the professional club game still has plenty of growth left in it, even with all the structural problems. I would be staggered if average attendances don’t rise again this year and hopefully, we will make a contribution towards that.”