Harlequins head coach Tabai Matson once again hailed the talents of Marcus Smith after the fly-half played a key role in ending Sale Sharks’ unbeaten record.
On his 100th Premiership appearance, the England playmaker was in top form as the Londoners overcame the Sharks 29-13 at the AJ Bell Stadium.
Smith scored 24 of their points, which included a try, two conversions and five penalties, as they responded well to last weekend’s defeat to Leicester Tigers.
Control and tempo
“Every time he goes away with England he seems to come back a better player, and that’s fantastic for us,” Matson said.
“He set a terrific example again today.
“He measures the tempo and keeps control, and he keeps the scoreboard ticking over.
“To have 100 Premiership appearances under his belt at just 23 years of age is just ridiculous.
“He’s a great young player and he’s going to break lots of records.
“This is a great result for our club – Sale has been a notoriously tough place for us to come over the years but we’ve dug deep today and got the result.
“We squeezed them at crucial points and though it wasn’t classic Quins rugby, we stopped a lot of Sale’s momentum at crucial times.”
Quins ended Sale’s winning start to the Premiership season as they forced the hosts into a number of errors throughout the encounter.
Smith was on hand to punish any indiscretion and Sharks boss Alex Sanderson admitted that it was a bad day at the office.
The exception, not the norm
Sanderson said: “There’s not really that much more we need to do to create the chances, but we just need to finish them off.
“Our set-pieces need to be better too, so of course it’s been disappointing.
“It’s clear our decision-making in attack needs to be much better.
“Couple that with more discipline in defence and not giving away as many penalty points, and that’s what went wrong I think today.
“We just gave Quins too many points.
“So far this season we’ve been operating with unflappable calmness in our play, but we didn’t see that today.
“I’ve just said to the lads that that has to be the exception there, not the norm.
“We’ll have a miserable Monday but we have to come back in on Tuesday now and get back on the horse.”
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