"We've lost our first three games and we would be stupid if we were to sit here and say that everything is fine, because it is a very tough league and we've lost our first two home games, exactly as we did last year and that is not acceptable."

"I'm sure that the fans will rightly be unhappy about that, and I can't say that I would blame them."

When Paul Burke converted England centre Will Greenwood's try with just over 11 minutes remaining it seemed as if Quins had timed their sprint finish to perfection but it wasn't to be.

"I never thought that we would lose, right up until the last seven or eight minutes," continued Evans, still angry at what he had witnessed in the closing stages.

"We made far too many errors, there were bits of our game that were okay and bits of our game that were quite good. The big thing today was that our ball maintenance was poor and that meant that we never got away from them."

"When we did put a little bit together we scored two pretty good tries and so did they, hence 23-all but I felt that we started very poorly. Played well second quarter but we gave them a try from a poor chase which opened the field up early in the second half and again in the last half-an-hour whilst we are not chasing it, it is a dogfight, and then I wasn't happy in the way we played from 23-all onwards."

"I thought we played poorly then, but we played quite well to get back to 23-all, but we didn't play well from then on."

After defeats in their opening two matches, Quins fans could and should have expected a win from game three, but an unwelcome treble has put the side under greater pressure to get a result next time out.

"I don't see any reason why we should have been low in confidence. Yeah losing our first two doesn't help, but there is no reason for the guys to be feeling some way under the cosh."

"We should have beaten Gloucester here, and we lost at Welford Road along with every other side that's been there for the last four years, so I don't see any reason why they should be low in confidence."

"But if we don't play better yeah, we could be in for a tough winter. It doesn't matter how you lose whether you've thrown it away or you are well beaten - you lose," said Evans still visibly annoyed, before adding "I've been in better moods."

Quins will study tapes of why the scrum moved back at a rate of knots two minutes from the end, but Quins have a lot of work to do this week if they are not to get off to their worst start in a league campaign ever this weekend.

"We scrummed under no pressure at all, all afternoon and then suddenly whoosh - and you can only put that down to lack of concentration I suppose," commented Evans, who after many years in the front row has some idea of what happens in the middle of a pack.

"It certainly cost us a chance of the game. Usually a scrummage in a game you can see the way that it is going but I thought that both the front rows pretty much cancelled themselves out all afternoon. We didn't do too much to their ball and they didn't do anything to our ball and you think that's all right that's the way it is this afternoon, and then in the final scrum of the afternoon we suddenly rocketed."

"Now that doesn't suddenly happen. They didn't suddenly get much better and we didn't get much worse - that's not feasible. Maybe we thought that we've got to get down the other end of the field and score a try. You have to put it down to a loss of concentration."

"The Premiership gets tougher every year. At this point I trot out the hard work and pulling together and all that kind of stuff - but it's true, it's a cliche, but it's actually true. That is the only way that you ever get out of trouble or you break a bad trot is that you work very hard and pull together and you work your way through it."