NEWS AND FOCUS ON ALL-IRELAND LEAGUE: Johnny Watterson talks to Belfast Harlequins coach Andre Bester abouthow his side annihilated teams in Division Two with their adventurous approach
In Belfast Harlequins' last match of their league campaign, they travelled to Cork to meet Sunday's Well. Having two weeks earlier wrapped up first place on the table the team instructions were simple - "do not kick the ball".
Harlequins didn't kick and scored 59 points with nine tries. The ability to stack tries like deckchairs came as no surprise. Against Ballynahinch it was 62-0 and 10 tries while Bangor conceded 53 points and UL Bohemians 52 points. Neither Malone, Bective nor UCC could stop the Belfast side from landing more than 40 points in their encounters.
At under-20 level in the league play-offs the club, demonstrating their depth, were beating Dungannon 94-7 when the game was cut short such was Harlequins outrageous domination.
At the end of the Division Two blitz, the first team had scored 549 points with 12 bonus points from 15 matches. In the end it was less a competition than a demonstration of the ambitions of the city's new club.
Coach Andre Bester shows he has no allergy to pride in the team's performance this season, nor does he try to see too far ahead.
"Next year will be tough," he says. "But I don't think that's a problem. Not one contracted player with us has played in all the matches this season. In seven of the matches we'd no contracted player involved and in four other matches only one contracted player played. We also played one match with three contracted players and we lost.
"You can't have too many masters in your life. Obviously our focus is on club players and that has been our strength. You've got to make players think that Harlequins is the most important thing."
When Bester moved from Ballymena to the Belfast suburb he brought three players with him, Ajay Derwin, their prolific try scorer Rhys Botha, and Cois Beukes, all South Africans like the coach. Knitted to a group containing the talents of Sheldon Coulter, Richie Weir, Clem Boyd, Simon Best and Neil Doak and dovetailed with the younger players, Harlequins took off. Division Two has been a convenient platform to launch more lofty ambitions.
"We played two guys all season who were at school last year, Declan Fitzpatrick and Andrew Lowe," says Bester. "We'd 14 players left from a squad of 22 at the beginning of the season so we'd to start from scratch. But for next season we've got to improve by 20 per cent and we know that. But the depth here is good. In fact I think we're much more healthy than any other club and in terms of work we are very close to a professional working set-up. The players have reacted well to that."
Facing Old Crescent in Saturday's semi-final play-off is as much a promotion and spectacle as a measure of who is the strongest side in the league. No doubt Harlequins' sights are on the trophy but defeat or success for the club is likely to be viewed in the context of next season rather than this. When the teams met in the first match of the league, Harlequins narrowly came through 17-15.
"You tend to go into your shell in tough matches and don't play your natural game," says Bester. "Our team will be different, probably six to seven changes from the last time. I don't believe we have the same edge as we had when we were seeking promotion but we will go out and try to make it a showpiece."
One blip was the side's loss to Barnhall after they had secured promotion. There was nothing in the match and Harlequins unleashed a bunch of fresh faces. Old Crescent will rightly hold up that result as a perceived weakness in their opposition but in Deramore Park, where their £300,000 investment in pitch development is coming to fruition, the Belfast Harlequins, perhaps in the image of the personable coach himself, will not lack confidence.
