Luke Wallace expects hard work to pay dividends for Harlequins

Harlequins are ready to put their worst season in recent years behind them with Luke Wallace vowing they will be fitter than ever when the Premiership starts in five weeks.
After winning the Premiership in 2012, Quins went on a downslope and last season they failed to make it out of their Champions Cup group and finished only eighth in the Premiership.
That means their European weekends will be spent in the Challenge Cup but flanker Wallace, who scored two tries against the USA in Quins' first outing of the season two weeks ago, is adamant they are in a good place.
“We're a lot further down the line at this stage of pre-season than we were in previous seasons,” he told The Rugby Paper. “We've had a lot of time to work on different things and we're a lot fitter than we were. That's crucial for the way we want to play the game.
“Another thing was making sure everyone is clear about their role. We want to move the ball wide but if everyone wants to get their hands on the ball we can be a bit narrow.
“We worked hard on holding our width, being patient and making sure we still commit at the breakdown to produce good ball.
“People are expecting us to do better this season and so are we. We have to be more consistent in our performances. We saw patches of how good we could be last season but couldn't put in a full 80 minutes performance.
“I was pleased with our win over the USA. It was good to get some rugby in even if it's still a month before our first competitive game.
“We were very happy with some parts of our game like our mauling and set-piece. We worked hard on that so it was good to see the fruits of our hard work.”
Quins have lost 659 competitive games worth of experience with the departure of George Robson and the retirements of Ugo Monye and Tom Williams.
In recent years, Conor O'Shea trusted academy youngsters to fill the gap but he has bucked that trend and brought in former Wallaby captain James Horwill and Scotland wing Tim Visser.
Lions Test stars Adam Jones and Jamie Roberts plus Samoa's Winston Stanley also don Quins shirts next season.
“The core of the pack has a lot of experience playing together but to add those guys will only make us better,” Wallace added.
“Most of us have played about 100 games for the club but Adam and James will bring their experience from the outside and I'm sure they will teach us a lot.
“Adam has already helped Kyle Sinckler and Will Collier a lot but he's also really good at knowing what his job is. If the backs want to do their flashy stuff he never gets in the way.
“I'm still hoping to push my leadership role, though, especially on a day-to-day basis with the younger guys coming through.
“I was pretty pleased with my game against the Eagles where I was strong over the ball. I'm in a good place at the minute and I can't wait for the season to start.”
NICK VERDIER