Monday night television being uniformly hopeless, yesterday I decided to nip down to the Stoop with daughter Grace to watch a 7.30pm kick-off ‘A’ team fixture between the Harlequins and London Wasps that ended in a close 29-25 victory for the hosts.

The ‘A’ team league is designed to give Premiership clubs (and the previous year’s relegated club) an opportunity to give players from the first team squads who didn’t make the 22 at the weekend (or who were in the 22 but didn’t actually get on the pitch), the academies, and anyone coming back from injury, a chance for an outing in proper match conditions. It’s divided into Northern and Southern divisions, with the winners of each meeting in a final. I’ve only ever been to a handful of ‘A’ team fixtures – Quins play most of theirs at Imber Court at Thames Ditton, so this one at the Stoop was unusual – but their main fascination lies in either gauging the progress of top players returning from injury or spotting youngsters who are beginning to look the Real Deal in fairly exalted company. One added new factor is that the Premiership powers-that-be are talking openly of discontinuing the ‘A’ league next season so that the clubs can reduce the size of their overall playing squads - a move that some (including me) fear might jeopardise the future development of young English players.

They’d only opened the Lexus Stand but I was surprised at the size of the crowd (I’d estimate about 3,000), which was a tribute to the number of travelling Wasps fans as much as anything. Several of the Quins’ first team regulars were milling about … I noticed Ugo Monye, Chris Robshaw, George Robson, De Wet Barry (fresh from the ‘not guilty’ verdict on his horror tackle/red card on Saturday during the Newcastle Falcons Premiership fixture), James Percival, Simon Keogh, Tosh Masson, Paul Volley, David Strettle and Danny Care … and they’d put out a pretty top team to take on the Pests – amongst them Seb Jewell, Charlie Amesbury, Chris Malone, Steve So’oialo, Gary Botha, Jim Evans, Ollie Kohn and Chris Hala’ufia, with Andy Gomarsall (England first choice scrum half coming into this year’s Six Nations championship) amongst those on the bench.

Quins, who came out of the blocks pretty fast - giant Ollie Kohn, 6 feet 7 and 19 stone 6 (or 272 pounds), who has been out of the first team squad for the past two months, was putting himself about with gusto, plainly trying to make an impression – were comfortably ahead at the break but in the second half things became a bit open and free and the classy Wasps backs score two excellent tries in the last fifteen minutes. They say the scoreboard never lies but on the day the Wasps looked the better footballing team: Quins had to rely upon Chris Malone potting his goals (7 from 9 attempts from all parts of the field, a great improvement on his 2 misses from 2 when he came on against Newcastle on Saturday) to stay ahead. For me the stand-out player on the night was Wasps’ young centre Dominic Waldouck, definitely a future England prospect, whilst for the Quins’ wing threequarters Charlie Amesbury & Seb Stegmann both looked sharp and South African international hooker Gary Botha was conspicuous in the loose. However the champagne moment came towards the end of the first half when Quins’ diminutive Zimbabwean youngster Ryan Manyika - only 5 feet 7 and 11 stone 2 (or 156 pounds) - playing at full back instead of his normal fly half position, came up in the defensive line and dumped a hulking Wasps centre on his back, rather in the fashion that Welshman Gavin Henson poleaxed debutant Matthew Tait a few seasons back in an England versus Wales international and put the latter’s career on hold for over two years, as a direct result of which the ball went loose … out to the Quins wing, from where So’oialo ran sixty yards to score a try.

Thank God the fixture had been scheduled for a Monday evening. Had it been set for a Tuesday I’d have missed it because of course that’s Holby City night.