O’Shea: ‘Draw was an incredible game’

Conor O'Shea might not have enjoyed Harlequins defensive lapses but admitted Sunday's 39-39 draw with Gloucester was "an incredible game."

Harlequins and Gloucester produced five tries each in front of over 70,000 at Twickenham in a contest that was certainly entertaining for supporters, if not quite for each team's respective defence coach.

Having secured the bonus point both teams came away from Twickenham with three points and O'Shea was happy enough with how Harlequins have started their domestic campaign, sitting in fourth after seven matches.

"It was an incredible game," he said.

"Fair play to Gloucester, we had possession but we weren't accurate enough and we tried to play at times with a little too much ambition.

"But there were so many big positives. At 29-24 up the game looked like it was ours, we are then 29-39 down with six minutes to go and for me, what I'll focus on, is the side who actually wanted to come back and we ended up with a drop goal that could have won us the game and that shows a huge amount of what is upstairs in these guys.

"And I think we are going to get stronger as the season goes on and I hope we don't concede tries like we did today – it was probably great for the neutral but horrendous for me.

"I thought we played some outstanding rugby today and the big thing for us is that we got ourselves back in the game and got three points.

"This is game seven of 22 and we could have come away with one, could have come away with two, nearly got five but we have come away with three and in a long season you just have to keep on learning the whole time."