Harlequins Rugby Club is another professional rugby club which is based in London, England and has played a number of matches at the Super League They is either called as HARLEQUINS or just Quins in a shortened manner. The original name of the club was Fulham London Crusaders which moved on to becoming London Broncos before acquiring it’s current name. There are news stating that the club is about to change its name a color again after the 2012 season.
Harlequins Rugby Club was founded in the 1980 and is of current existence. It is currently headed by Gus Mackay as the CEO. The coach and captain for the club is Rob Powell and Chad Randall respectively. Their jersey includes a combination of blue, red and brown in the form of checked squares. Their home jersey and away jersey differ with the substitution of the color yellow instead of brown.
Rugby clubs were set up in the beginning by rich local business men as a means of making money. Due to this, the sport of rugby continued to be a prime sport prevalent only in northern England. In the year 1980, Fulham rugby league club was set up and had the same means of profit making as the other existent clubs. However Harlequins Rugby Club had performed excellently during its initial stages and hence created a name for itself in the rugby world. However even after their excellent game performance, the club was not getting in the required income from profits and hence there were decisions to shut it down. During this time, players like Barbara Close and the coach continued to give in their best to make sure that the club continued its existence and their efforts finally paid off. In the year 1991, the name changed to London Crusader with an aim to start afresh. The club had a number of victories and the money started rolling in as well. When the club finally changed its name to Harlequins Rugby Club, the major shareholder was Ian Lenagan. Under his authority, a new coaching set up was established and all previous establishments were re organized for the betterment of the club. In the same year, the club placed 7th in the Super League and showed considerable improvement as compared to their previous matches. Ian Lenagan went on to become the owner of the club, but never gave up his position of shares.
The honors received by Harlequins Rugby Club are being the runners up in the Super League Championship in the year 1997 followed by the same title in the Challenge Cup in the year 1999. Besides these two the club has had its ups and downs and its lowering of performance and standards have usually been due to the decrease in the flow if money in to the club results in any of its star players from resigning or quitting shifting to some other higher paying clubs. Due to these reasons, the club constantly has to undergo various changes in short intervals.