Archie McParland’s hat-trick of tries helped Northampton Saints fight back to beat Harlequins 40-24 and boost their hopes of making the Prem Rugby Cup semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Quins, who are now eliminated having lost five of their six group games, raced into a 19-0 lead through scores from Tom Lawday, Luke Yendle and Cassius Cleaves.<\/p>\n
McParland reduced the deficit to five points at half-time with two well-taken tries before Cam Anderson stretched Quins’ lead after the break.<\/p>\n
Anthony Belleau crossed to keep Saints in touch and Ollie Sleightholme raced in to put the visitors in front at Twickenham Stoop.<\/p>\n
Jake Murray thought he had put Quins back ahead but his try was harshly ruled out for an offside in the build-up and McParland made sure of victory as he went in under the posts.<\/p>\n
Gloss was added to the scoreline as a late penalty try took Northampton above Saracens into second in Pool B.<\/p>\n
The top two sides in each group will go through to the semi-finals in March.<\/p>\n
Saints next visit Newcastle Red Bulls on Friday, before rounding off the pool stage with potentially a knockout game against Saracens at Franklin’s Gardens on 28 February.<\/p>\n
Northampton were made to work hard for their victory by a Quins side who knew they were all but out of the competition before kick-off.<\/p>\n
The home side’s task was made easier in the early stages when Saints’ Luke Green was sent to the sin-bin for a dangerous clearout which saw Ethan Clarke stretchered off.<\/p>\n
But just as Quins looked to be running away with it, 20-year-old McParland finished a neat move to get Northampton on the board and then went over following an outstanding break from James Ramm.<\/p>\n
With Saints 26-24 up after Sleightholme’s bonus-point try, Murray raced in for Quins.<\/p>\n
However, referee Harry Walbaum chalked it off after he adjudged Murray was in an offside position when a grubber kick was sent through.<\/p>\n
Moments later Sam Graham burst away from a ruck and found McParland who sprinted over the whitewash for his third try. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Archie McParland’s hat-trick of tries helped Northampton Saints fight back to beat Harlequins 40-24 and boost their hopes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-478355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}