McFarlane was happy to end the domestic rugby campaign on a high with a convincing win against Dubai Hurricanes last night, but says he is not content with just one trophy in his first season in charge.

“There’s an underlying current of annoyance of how close we were,” said McFarlane following Quins 62-12 destruction of Canes at Zayed Sports City.

“We played (Dubai) Exiles four times including at the Dubai Sevens and we only lost once, when we were unable to field a full-strength side, so we’re a bit gutted with how things have turned out, which shows the expectations and standards we have at the club. The lads have high expectations as do I.”

Before their 19-9 defeat to Exiles last week, Quins had only lost once in the Premiership. That was a 20-18 defeat to capital city neighbours Saracens in October and McFarlane felt that result was key just before the mid-season break.

He added: “I look back to the Saracens game, which was a stickler for us. Before last week they were the only side we’d lost to and that was a key game.

“Looking back, at Al Ghazal we were really poor. We were missing a few players but we were poor and that had a massive knock-on effect. There’s areas for us to improve and that’s where we’ll focus on rather than being happy and content.”

Rapid winger Max Trimble scored a hat-trick for Quins with Luke Stevenson and Matt Smith both grabbing braces, with individual scores for Attie Stander, Barry Dwyer and Pinati Lui.