Zach Mercer: Montpellier’s performance ‘proved French teams care’ about Champions Cup

Philippe Saint-Andre’s men were outstanding on Sunday, racing into a 34-0 lead thanks to a brace of tries via Mercer and a score apiece from Gabriel Ngandebe, Cobus Reinach and Titi Lamositele.

The French have sometimes been accused of disregarding European competition, with the Top 14 seen as the much bigger prize, but that was not the case at GGL Stadium.

Although Harlequins responded well, touching down through George Hammond, Andre Esterhuizen, Joe Marchant and Louis Lynagh, the Frenchmen are still in a dominant position.

Mercer knows the Quins threat well having played for Bath prior to joining Montpellier but is aiming to complete the job next weekend.

“It is always good to play against some familiar faces in a different competition. Everyone thinks the French teams don’t care about Europe, but we do and we proved that today,” he said.

“Everyone wrote us off after the Leinster result. We will enjoy this win, but we’ve got to go away next week and we know we’ve got a big challenge ahead of us.

“It was frustrating watching the end of the game, but Harlequins have got a reputation and they came back and scored some points.

“We’ll just have to do the same next week and try to score 34 points in the first half.

“We’ve got a lot to improve on, but we’ll certainly take scoring 40 points against the English champions.”

Scrum-half Reinach echoed Mercer’s frustrations over the second half display but is confident they can rectify it when they face Quins in the second leg.

“We certainly haven’t done enough. We gave ourselves a good cushion until half-time but then we went away from our game plan, out of our shape and out of our DNA and that cost us in the end,” he said.

“The talking point of the week for us will be how we