BOSS Conor O'Shea refused to blame Nick Evans after Harlequins crashed to a first defeat of the season at home to Northampton Saints on Friday night.
The Kiwi fly half uncharacteristically missed four out of six penalties as Northampton edged a tight game at a rain-soaked and sodden Stoop.
But instead of being critical, O'Shea instead chose to point out the amount of times Evans' usual accuracy with the boot has got Quins over the line.
He said: “Nick will move on and forget it. He has won so many games for this club over the years, so we won't be pointing any fingers.”
Stephen Myler also missed a penalty for Northampton, but was on target with two others as well as a conversion for the only try of the game, from James Wilson with 15 minutes left.
All of which meant Quins would have won had Evans not suffered an off day with his kicks, but O'Shea was not too downbeat going into this weekend's trip to Worcester.
He said: “We missed four kicks at goals, which is a real kick in the solar plexus, but I'm not disappointed with the effort – it's tough to play running rugby in those conditions. Up to when they scored the try we were on top, and we played some pretty good stuff for the conditions.
“We didn't take our opportunities, and I knew there would be at least one occasion when the ball would squirt somewhere, and it went to them. Some days you get the bounce of the ball and some you don't.
“I thought we had enough of the second half to build a bit of a lead, but these things happen, and it's a long old season. We will play worse than that and win, like we did against Wasps. We didn't get the reward this time, but if we play like that week in, week out, we will be fine.”
To compound the misery, O'Shea admitted it “did not look good” for Joe Gray, who went off with a knee injury just 14 minutes in, but the Quins boss insisted it's too early to say how long the hooker will be out for.
On the plus side, Mike Brown put in a performance at full back which had O'Shea described as “magnificent”, and will have made England boss Stuart Lancaster sit up and take note too.
