Gilmore: Harlequins expected a difficult start after 48-0 Gloucester defeat

Harlequins head coach Jason Gilmore said he expected a difficult start to the season after his side were thrashed 48-0 by Gloucester on Saturday, the club's heaviest league defeat for 26 years. Quins sit bottom of the Prem table after losing their first two matches.

Gilmore pointed to a summer of changes at the club and a period of transition as context for the slow start. Having been in interim charge for six months after Danny Wilson left Harlequins to join Wales' coaching team, Gilmore was confirmed as permanent boss in March. Quins finished ninth in the table last season, their lowest finish for eight years. Robbie Deans was appointed performance director and the coaching staff were reshaped with Rob Hunter, formerly of Exeter Chiefs, joining as forwards coach and Brad Cooper arriving as attack coach.

Commenting on the immediate aftermath of the Gloucester defeat, Gilmore told BBC Radio London: "We're certainly not going to be at our best early doors, but it won't be too far away." He added: "There will be bumps here and there, but the weekend wasn't one we can accept. We've just got to stick to task."

Gilmore described the work still to be done on attack and set-piece systems, saying: "We've been learning a brand new attack system and we've got a brand new line-out system that we're putting in place that's going to take four to six weeks just to bed down." He also said: "We've got the international players that have just come back into the building as well that are learning it on the run." He concluded that "They've done their prep work, but there are two massive pieces of your game that we're still building and still learning."

Former Harlequins and England winger Ugo Monye labelled the Gloucester display "one of the worst performances" he has ever seen. On the Rugby Union Weekly podcast Monye said: "They got smashed in the scrum and line-out, their backfield coverage was poor, they got smashed at the gain line." He added: "They didn't score a single point in a league where they're literally handing out points for free."

Gilmore said he had been frank with his players about what went wrong, explaining: "It's not 'going at' the players, it's more just being honest about things that we wanted to do that we didn't do." He added: "What we don't want to do is jump at shadows. We've had a pretty reasonable four weeks leading into that, so we've just got to get back on the tools and work as hard as we can and put out a good performance this weekend."

This Sunday Harlequins are away to Sale, who claimed their first win of the season by beating Saracens last weekend despite having Jacques Vermeulen sent off. Gilmore said: "That's the beauty of sport - now you get your chance to redeem yourself." He also commented: "If we could have played the game a bit sooner after the Gloucester game to get back out there, you'd definitely choose that."

Harlequins travel to Sale on Sunday and Gilmore said: "We're working hard this week in our prep, as the boys always do, and we're keen to go up there and show the best versions of ourselves."