You must be gutted after that result Mark?

"Yes," said the Quins boss.

And would you like to expand on that?

"No not really," he continued before being coaxed to say, "just really disappointed."

The only other time that I have ever known Evans to be so monosyllabic was when he was in another disguise, that as Saracens head coach, after his mid-table side had been thumped 27-0 at the Stoop way back in April 1997 against a Quins team destined to finish third in the table, just a point behind second placed Bath.

Still, this was a night to feel gutted - Quins had worked hard to win this one and came agonisingly close with a very late conversion chance after Luke Sherriff forced his way over following a rolling maul from a lineout.

"You can forget the last drop goal from Charlie (Hodgson) because if we had kicked the conversion they would have gone short, and would they have got the restart back? Who knows."

"They would have had to have dropped a goal from 45 metres or go for one running attack with a minute on the clock, so maybe they would have done it anyway."

"But to come up here with eight first team players out, for various reasons, and to get that close plus to play quite well in patches, and then to work very hard and to be very patient in the last minute and not panic and get over, and then have a chance to win it with a reasonably straight forward conversion is disappointing, yes of course it is."

So Quins had to settle for one point for getting close rather than four as winners, but at least we are collecting points - and the performances are getting better.

"I do think that we've really only played one poor game this year," continued the Quins boss.
"We weren't really very good at Leicester where we were missing an awful lot of players there to. We played very poorly at home against Leeds and I was really annoyed."

"Last week I thought we played okay, and tonight I thought we played okay - again. I was reasonably happy with the performance but very disappointed with the outcome."

Plenty of thrills and spills in a game that ebbed and flowed and saw both sides have chances to win, but did it all boil down to the last kick? Not so said Evans.

"You can't just blame David," continued Evans, who was forced to draft in Slemen to his starting line-up after first choice fly-half Paul Burke picked up a hamstring injury last week against London Irish.

"If you're going to take that attitude then you could say Viliame Satala missed a tackle on their second try that took them out to 17 points, that was seven point and so it's his fault. It's not his fault, it's not David's fault, collectively we came up a bit short."

"David was playing his first game in a number ten shirt and I thought he played pretty well. He mixed his game up quite well, got us into wide areas. His tactical kicking was pretty good and I thought overall he had a pretty good game, but no-one will remember that will they? But that's the way it is."