Cadan Murley hat-trick helps Harlequins to emphatic win over Gloucester
Cadan Murley claimed a hat-trick of tries as Harlequins dealt a potentially fatal blow to Gloucester's Gallagher Premiership play-off hopes with a 38-19 victory at Allianz Stadium.
Quins might be out of the race for a top-four finish but they delivered one of their most ruthless displays of the season in a six-try demolition that saw Rodrigo Isgro cross twice.
Making their rout possible was an accommodating Gloucester defence that gave player of the match Murley, Isgro and Tyrone Green the freedom of a sun-drenched Twickenham.
Marcus Smith celebrated his British and Irish Lions selection on Thursday with a commanding display that was short on fireworks but notable for the intelligent way he piloted the team around the field.
Gloucester lacked hunger for the fight and paid the price with an emphatic defeat that leaves them in sixth place, three points adrift of the play-offs with two matches remaining.
In a sign of their dominance, Quins had banked the bonus point by half-time with Murley crossing for two of their four tries, and they would have scored two more but for errors at crucial moments.
Good fortune enabled Murley's opener with Smith's pass to Alex Dombrandt looking suspiciously forward, but there was no arguing with the quality of the finish by the England wing.
Murley then showed his pace to outrun Christian Wade in a foot race before Green inexcusably dropped the ball over the line and Dombrandt saw an opportunist try disallowed for offside at the line-out.
Quins quickly rallied from the setback of having successive tries chalked off, Will Evans finishing a line-out maul, and the hosts then ran amok in the face of Gloucester's defensive collapse, which was not helped by Chris Harris' departure with injury.
Player after player slipped off tackles, allowing Isgro and Murley to touch down with Green impressing through his footwork.
The ease of Murley's second try will give Gloucester nightmares as he ghosted into the line from a tap penalty before straightening to evade the visitors' last line of defence with ease.
Only Wade's screaming finish in the 33rd minute - his 91st Premiership try, leaving him 10 behind the record held by Chris Ashton - spared the visitors from a total shut-out in the first half as their backs clicked into gear.
Gloucester needed a big second half to save their Premiership season but just nine minutes in they cracked for a fifth time as Isgro raced across the field, capitalising on hesitation in the midfield to help send Murley over for his hat-trick.
Dombrandt and then Ruan Ackermann were sent to the sin bin, robbing the match of both number eights, before the Quins onslaught continued with Isgro grabbing his second.
Gloucester hit back through tries by Santiago Carreras and Jack Cotgreave, but it was too little too late.
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'They let me stay out there and do repetitions and it works for this type of goal. Other clubs will look at the numbers from the weekend and say, 'You ran a certain amount so you can't do this or that during the week (to rest)'. Repetition is huge.' Aaronson models his practice on the near-obsessional attitudes of Premier League icons from the past, and he values Leeds' trust in him to balance that extra training with the necessary recovery time. 'Going back to when Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney were at Man United, do you think they told them to stay off the pitch?' he says. 'They were always doing extra stuff in the Prem back in that era. The clubs never said no. But clubs are saying no a bit now. 'I'd never push myself too much because I want to be playing every game and if I'm injured, I can't.' It has certainly worked. In December, he applied another fine finish to what was a goal-of-the-season contender against Derby County, later called a 'perfect team move' by Farke. 'This is a typical goal from us,' Aaronson says. 'The movement has been so fluid. A lot of teams have sat back and (then) it's difficult to create opportunities but the way we've been structured and our movements were hard to pick up. 'This is a great example, the passes were intricate and very difficult to pick up. It's hard for teams to do much about it. I know Joel Piroe is a striker who wants to combine, and I can run off him. This is a false-nine type of thing. I feel like I'm pretty good at running off him and playing these one-twos. Advertisement 'For me, it's one of the goals of the season. We do a lot of small-sided games and 11 v 11 in really tight areas (in training), so when we're playing on a bigger pitch, it pays off.' Another goal, on the opening weekend of the season in a 3-3 draw with visitors Portsmouth, was a result of Aaronson studying some of the game's best finishers. 'Sometimes I don't shoot enough because I want to give the final pass. But in the summer, I worked a lot on trying to get off my shot,' he says. Three Portsmouth players are between him and the goal as he moves into the penalty area and shapes to shoot after receiving Piroe's pass. 'There are defenders in front here but it goes through their legs,' he adds. 'A little bit of hesitation can throw a defender off and (help you) find a gap. 'It's just shifting to find the angle, and knowing that when you shift the ball, defenders always open their legs. I don't know why — they tell them not to these days, but they always do it. Salah does it all the time. He goes left and then back the way he came, because he knows the defender is going to open his legs. 'The goalie can't see the ball until late either, because it goes through a player's legs. It's not a powerful shot by any means, but it catches him off-guard.' Farke has spoken about calming Aaronson down in crucial moments to ensure he is making the right decisions, and the 47-time U.S. international does feel he is more composed now. 'He (Farke) has spoken to me about it in finishing situations,' he says. 'When I was younger, even though I haven't been a crazy goalscorer, I would always get chances. Even in the Prem season two years ago, I had a lot of chances, but I hit the woodwork a lot. But at the top level, you will only get a couple of chances a game. 'Back in the Premier League I might get one or two chances, max, a game and that's when you have to calm down.' His rapport on and off the field with Dutchman Piroe, the Championship's 19-goal top scorer last season, has helped. 'I have learned from him,' Aaronson says. 'We are always doing finishing together Thursdays and Fridays after training.' The drills are simple but effective: 'I try to keep up with him, because if I play him one v one he's always winning,' he says. 'Maybe once or twice out of 100, I come out first. 'The way he strikes the ball, I always try to learn from.' Aside from his improving attacking output, Farke has valued Aaronson's energy and pressing. He is often the player charged with leading Leeds' pressing game and his influence is especially notable in this next example from that April match against Bristol City. In this passage of play, he and Gnonto get close to two City players near the touchline in opposition territory, and when the visitors' Ross McCrorie makes a short pass to midfield colleague Jason Knight, it is the American's cue to start the press. Knight turns and plays a forward pass through midfield towards team-mate George Earthy. Seeing the opposing winger has space to run into, Aaronson eats up the yards as he sprints to get back: His presence seems to prompt Earthy to turn away from the Leeds goal and play the ball back to his centre-half Haydon Roberts. The defender quickly returns it to Earthy in a one-two but Aaronson is now all over them and closing the space. His example is taken up by Leeds' right-back Jayden Bogle, who gets tight on Earthy and challenges, as Gnonto also zooms back. Advertisement In the end, Earthy is forced to play back towards his own goal again and the ball, deflected off the incoming Gnonto, travels into City's half and goes out for a throw. A potentially dangerous situation has been snuffed out. Aaronson will frequently continue to press as far as the opposing goalkeeper and force him to go long. He is also often tasked with man-marking the opposition's No 10. He explains he is not always the designated pressing lead. 'It's off a feeling,' he says. 'Me and Illia, or whoever the other eight is, presses with the two sixes. 'We also have pressing triggers. It can also be the winger or the striker who starts the press if they're higher in their half. If they (the opposition) come into our half, we morph into more of a 4-4-2 and I can jump from the eight to the centre-back, and that pushes everyone up.' Does he look before starting the press to ensure his effort is being backed up? 'I do — especially when you're playing teams that have double sixes who are always on the ball,' he says. 'It's tough to really jump in when guys are going off your back shoulder. 'Middlesbrough are very good at this with (fellow USMNT midfielder) Aiden Morris and Hayden Hackney; they're good at knowing I'm going to go and they can just bounce it out. So we have to be more careful. But it's a good trigger for us because when everyone goes, we know we have a good chance of winning the ball.' As with that hard-running effort against Bristol City, does he have to strike the right balance between leading the way physically and preserving energy to get on the ball and then make things happen offensively for Leeds? 'Sometimes I need to control it a bit more. If I am more rested, I can do even more with the ball,' Aaronson says. 'But sometimes you want to help the team and get the crowd going. Advertisement 'That's in games, though. If I have to run in pre-season, I'll always try to find a way to still get the ball out there rather than running.' Aaronson's occasional frustration at his 'runner' reputation often leads to less attention to his creative prowess. Last season, he should have had more than those two assists, when looking at his expected assists figure (5.7). In open play, his 1.7 chances created per 90 minutes was the best in the Leeds squad (among those to play 900+ minutes). 'I'm a perfectionist and after a game, if I haven't created much, I am hard on myself,' Aaronson says. Does he study the numbers that highlight his creative potential? 'I've looked, trust me,' he says. 'People say stats ruin the game and in one way I kind of agree because you can partly judge a player on how many assists or goals, but you also have to look at the pre-assists or what they do throughout the game to influence it.' There is flair to his game, too. We discuss the no-look backheel away to Watford in February, below, which teed up team-mate Daniel James for a shot at goal. James, who played the ball to Aaronson in the first place and ran onto his cute backheel, narrowly missed with the attempt. 'This game was super-open,' Aaronson recalls. 'I had a lot of time between the lines. I'm not going out to just assist and score, it's about the wider game. I knew that behind Joel on the right pocket, I had a ton of space. I've always liked to combine and play one-twos with team-mates. I like the close-quarter play, and it's about expressing yourself and having fun with the game. 'I trust DJ (James) will always be there, with his pace, and if I'm just flicking it or backheeling it, then he gets to it.' Aaronson is aware Leeds might not always be able to attack with such abandon next season when they are back in the Premier League. 'It's a mentality shift,' he says. 'When we go to Anfield (to face champions Liverpool), maybe we have to be smart and organised and wait for our chance to counter-attack.' Advertisement It will be a busy summer for the New Jersey native, who was included on the USMNT training-camp roster ahead of friendlies against Turkey on Saturday and Switzerland three days later, and may also play in the Concacaf Gold Cup when that starts on June 14. A good job, then, that energy isn't a problem and neither, increasingly, is self-belief for a player who had his doubters after he was loaned out by Leeds to Germany's Union Berlin following their 2023 relegation. He made 36 appearances, including 28 starts, for Leeds the last time they were in the English top flight, and insists he will return to the division as a rejuvenated performer. 'It'll be a different challenge because we won't be the best team in the league,' he says. 'The goal is to stay up. 'I'm mentally prepared for it and have grown so much since the last time. My game has gone a level higher and I'm more confident.' The My Game in My Words series is sponsored by the Active Cash Visa® Credit Card from Wells Fargo. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication. (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Tim Vizer / AFP,)
