"Technically, there were three key things," began Evans at the post-match press conference. "I thought our kicking out of hand was poor, which gave them opportunities to run in a broken field. I thought our individual and collective defence was poor."

"We missed a simple tackle for their third try in the guard area and that is just unforgivable. We fell off a lot of one-on-one tackles and apart from the first ten minutes when we started well, scored a good try, nicked two of their lineouts and turned the ball over twice, we lost all the collisions."

After Will Greenwood opened the scoring with the first try of the match after six minutes, the home side conceded four tries before the interval to trail 29-8 at the break, despite playing with the wind at their backs.

"The way we started, I thought yeah we're going to play today. We had had a good week, warm-up and the mood felt good, first ten minutes were good, then it all fell apart," said Evans, who felt the contest was all but over after 40 minutes. "We were playing for pride in the second half to be honest. The game was over by half-time. 29-8 down and about to play into the wind, then it's all over."

With the Zurich Premiership being such a competitive league, Evans fully appreciates how important it is to make the most of home advantage.

"If you lose your first home game then in golfing terms you're one over par. It's always the best way to look at the Premiership; you win at home and that's par, you lose it's one over, win away and it's one under. We're one over and it's not a very nice feeling, but we go to Newcastle next week (Sunday 19th September) and have a chance to get it back."

"We've played poorly for two weeks in a row and that has to be a concern. We've got a lot of work to do and a lot of things to fix. We've got to rediscover the cussedness and hard-nosed edge we got last year, which got us through a lot of very close games. We seem to have lost that a little bit."

Evans confirmed that Greenwood was forced to leave the field midway through the first half after he was concussed in scoring his try, though he may be fit to face Newcastle next Sunday. The news was not so good for Greenwood's centre partner Mel Deane, who could be out from between two to six weeks with a knee injury.