This season’s Premiership winners battled back from the brink time and time again before vanquishing Exeter in a hectic final
It goes without saying this was an epic. Another. And in this era of the comeback, who should be crowned as the English champions but a team that had seemed in pieces only a few months ago, their coach gone, their form ruined? Harlequins became English rugby’s unlikeliest champions – not the first to prevail from fourth place, perhaps, but undoubtedly the first to have found themselves in such seemingly hopeless positions throughout this season, right up to last weekend and the 28-0 deficit that needs no introduction.
Where is Paul Gustard now? Well, polishing some unlikely silverware of his own, actually, as defence coach of Benetton Treviso, newly crowned champions of the Rainbow Cup. But this gong is of rather more substance. Did Gustard lay the foundations, or was this turnaround all the more remarkable for the ruins he left behind?
