'We showed the resolve of champions,' says Harlequins Nick Evans

If events across the city at the Olympic Park have meant that football's Premier League and now rugby's Premiership have not begun with the usual fanfares, the London double-header was one way of grabbing attention. These sides blasted out of the blocks in a manner that had a 63,102 audience rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Last season 42 points separated the champions Harlequins from Wasps after a final day when Dai Young's desperate side needed a bonus point from a home defeat by Newcastle to survive in the Premiership. Now Wasps are on the verge of completing the sale of the club to a consortium led by their former player Ken Moss. Contracts were exchanged earlier in the summer and, on Saturday's evidence, Wasps are clearly a club worth investing in. The return of James Haskell and Tom Palmer to strengthen their pack along with the form of the quickest pair of wings in the division in Christian Wade and Tom Varndell are just two reasons to be optimistic. This performance will be a concern to London Welsh if they thought Wasps were going to be drawn into another relegation dogfight over the winter. What will worry Young, the director of rugby, is the psychological impact of being at the wrong end of the biggest turnaround in the history of the Premiership. Wasps were 20 points up after 12 minutes and 40-13 ahead 15 minutes after the break. Quins were all but dead and buried. But a barrage of 29 unanswered points and a quite stunning display by Quins fly-half Nick Evans in his 100th game for the club left Wasps' supporters reaching for the smelling salts. Evans is usually referred to as the second-best fly-half in the world but even Dan Carter may have struggled to match his compatriot's second-half display. He landed the winning penalty four minutes from time with a kick seven metres inside the Wasps' half after they were penalised at a scrum. Evans also scored Quins' fifth try and two minutes earlier created Mike Brown's second with a perfectly judged cross-kick that landed in the full-back's arms. Wasps, though, will be aggrieved that the TV match official, Graham Hughes, judged that Varndell's second "try" in the last move of the first half was ruled out because of a forward pass from Nicky Robinson to the No8 Billy Vunipola, while Evans' try stood despite what looked like a forward pass from Brown to Tom Guest in the buildup. To his credit, though, Young did not look to blame the officials for his side's collapse. "That would be the coward's way," he said. "The TMO is there for a reason. We didn't complain when the TMO ruled that Tom Varndell made a try-saving tackle at Bath last season that helped us stay in the Premiership. That's not the reason we lost. We played as well as I've seen us play for 50 minutes but we struggled for 30 minutes. James Haskell made a real impact but I had to take him off after an hour because he took a knock in training on Monday and didn't train with us for the rest of the week." Conor O'Shea, the Quins director of rugby, admitted that he thought the game was out of their reach when they fell 27 points behind. "Wasps have shown they're back, I wouldn't want to go through that again," he said. Evans agreed. "I said to Jordan Turner-Hall early in the second half that if we could win this it would be one for the scrapbook. This was like those games against Stade Français or the match when we were at Northampton and down to 13 men. But we do a lot of training for situations when we're under duress. This is a group of players who have been though some crap times but we showed the resolve of champions." London Wasps Southwell (capt); Varndell, Daly, Masi (Mayor, 48), Wade; Robinson, Simpson (Berry, 58; Simpson, 72); Payne, Lindsay (Thomas, 57), Staibano (Taulafo, 69), Launchbury, Wentzel, Haskell (Palmer, 62), Poff, Vunipola. Tries Wade 2, Varndell, Wentzel, Payne. Cons Robinson 3. Pens Robinson 3. Harlequins Brown; Williams, Hopper (Chisholm, 57), Turner-Hall, Lowe; Evans, Care (Dickson, 57); Marler, Gray (Buchanan, 58), Johnston, Kohn, Robson, Fa'asavalu (Guest, 57), Robshaw (capt), Easter. Tries Williams, Guest, Brown 2, Evans. Cons Evans 4. Pens Evans 3. Referee G Garner (England). Attendance 63,102.