Danny Care has insisted Harlequins will fall short of expected standards if they miss out on the Gallagher Premiership play-offs.
Harlequins host Bristol at The Stoop on Saturday, in a last-ditch play-off shootout.
Quins have spent much of the season sitting pretty in the all-important top-four play-off berths, but suddenly find themselves down in sixth – amid the league’s tightest-ever finish.
Harlequins must beat Bristol then hope for favours from both Saracens and Leicester.
Quins will need Sarries to see off Sale in north London and Leicester to defeat Exeter in the east Midlands to stand any chance of making that top-four.
Care is adamant Quins have improved markedly this season, reaching a maiden Investec Champions Cup semi-final. But he insisted that no amount of progress would ease the disappointment if the west Londoners miss out on the play-offs.
Quins’ punishing schedule caught up with them last week in a damaging 58-26 defeat by Exeter in Devon, but England scrum-half Care refused to blame that result in isolation for this weekend’s play-off jeopardy.
“To have the big wins we’ve had this year, at Racing 92 and Bordeaux in Europe, they are two incredible moments and games we’ll always remember,” said the 37-year-old Care.
“But at the end of the day you remember finals and you remember trophies more.
“We want to be in that top four, that was one of the goals for this club at the start of the season.
“Even though there’s some great things we can look back on, I still think this club should be playing in the top four in the Premiership.
“We’ve got to look at where we dropped points, but hopefully we don’t have to have that conversation because we still qualify, we get the win and somehow we sneak in.
“It hasn’t all hinged on the Exeter game, we’ve dropped points in other matches and given other teams bonus points when we shouldn’t have.”
Four of the five final-day fixtures will directly affect the play-off picture.
Comfortably the closest-ever Premiership finish, just 11 points separate Northampton in first from Exeter in seventh – any of whom can yet reach the play-offs.
The most congested table going into the final day in previous years was 15 points between first and seventh in 2008, and behind that, 18 points in 2009.
England’s stars of last year’s World Cup are pushing towards a year of non-stop rugby.
Care and his fellow Red Rose men are starting to feel the pinch, but are hardly about to ease off, not when the carrot of a third Premiership title for Quins still dangles.
“It’s been a hell of a season, it’s been a long old stint and it feels like three seasons rolled into one,” said Care, who retired from Test rugby after the Six Nations with 101 caps.
“If we don’t get an opportunity to have a shot at the big one at the end, we will be disappointed.
“But I would 100 per cent say we’ve made a lot of wider progress this season.
“Danny Wilson coming in as head coach has been massive for the club.
“He’s such a wily operator, and he knows how to get the best out of teams.
“What we’ve improved in the forwards, how clinical we’ve been in the opposition 22, all that is down to Danny’s work and his detail.
“And I think you’ve seen some real development of a nucleus of younger players coming through very strongly.
“We’ve hopefully shown some more strength in depth which hopefully will take this club forward, because the old boys can’t keep going for too long.
“So hopefully we have made a lot of strides, but like I say, we’d love to be playing in these big games at the end of the season.”
