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Danny Wilson on Chandler Cunningham-South’s ‘best game’ for Harlequins
By PA
Head coach Danny Wilson felt England flanker Chandler Cunningham-South was back to his best in Harlequins’ victory against Glasgow Warriors in the Investec Champions Cup.
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The result qualified Quins for the last 16 of the competition, with Racing 92’s narrow victory over the Stormers meaning they are now certain to finish inside the top four of Pool 4.
Cunningham-South had recently been left out of Harlequins’ starting line-up after some indifferent form, but the 21-year-old gave a standout display at the Twickenham Stoop that included scoring the game’s opening try.
Wilson said: “He’s played some really good games for us, but I’d say that’s his best one.
“I thought he was very good tonight, very physical, he carried well.
“As a team, I thought our carrying intent, against a choke defence, a big threat on the ball defence, we carried really low but without tackling ourselves, if that makes sense.
“Chandler was an example of that, he played 80 minutes as well and I think he has responded really well to not being selected for a couple of games.
“He came off the bench for us twice and played really well and he has carried that into a good start.
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“I am really pleased with the performance. We only had a two-day prep coming back from Toulon on the Monday. Boys trained brilliantly and put a gameplan in place that the guys executed excellently.
“That’s a good team we have beaten there, and we have beaten them quite convincingly.”
Harlequins controlled the first 25 minutes and opened up a 17-0 lead through tries by Cunningham-South and James Chisholm and a Marcus Smith penalty.
Tom Jordan rounded off a stunning move to get Glasgow on the board, but Quins made sure of victory with Cadan Murley’s try the only one scored in the second half.
Glasgow head coach Franco Smith said: “We were inaccurate and I said before the game our process needs to be good.
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“Everybody is on about teams that play not as well away from home, but our philosophy as a team at home will have that quality usually, so we knew we had to be on it from the start and we weren’t.
“We were turned over at the very first carry from the restart and that became a trend, so ended up defending a lot because we were inaccurate in attack.
“We lost the first line-out on attack, so we were the architects of our own demise.
“We’re still a proud team, we don’t want to lose so from that perspective it is a kick in the guts and it’s also an opportunity missed.
“I must also compliment Harlequins, I thought they disrupted us well – I think Danny knows us too well.”
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