Harlequins fly-half Tim Swiel has challenged his team-mates to keep up momentum created by their thumping European Rugby Challenge Cup win over Romanian side Timisoara Saracens.

Swiel scored one of 11 tries as John Kingston’s men racked up a 75-3 victory last time out, with Wales centre Jamie Roberts bagging a hat-trick. Swiel also added five conversions.

The victory saw Harlequins move top of Pool Five, and followed a 42-3 win in Romania the week before.

Swiel claims the team were pleased with their professionalism and structure as they capitalised on a depleted Timisoara, who had flanker Randall Morrison sent off after just two minutes in last Saturday’s clash.

“A few years ago, we might go into those games a bit over-confident, but I thought we stuck to our structures well, scored some good tries and got two good results,” said Swiel.

“The fact we restricted them to no tries was satisfying, we defended well, coming off a really poor Newcastle Falcons game where our defence wasn’t so great.”

The 38-32 defeat at Newcastle, Harlequins’ last in the league, was a match where Swiel said the team simply switched off.

“We’ve been working really hard in training,” he said. “We had a big switch off against Newcastle, and we can’t afford to do that in the Aviva Premiership.

“Everyone’s style is so competitive, and if you’re a betting man, you can’t always predict who is going to win each game, the competition is so great.

“The so-called lesser sides are getting much better, and those games are really hard.”

Harlequins, who have won five and lost five of their ten Aviva Premiership Rugby matches so far, host Gloucester Rugby on December 27.

They also have a perfect record at Twickenham Stoop, a run Swiel is itching to continue, before travelling to Worcester Warriors on New Year’s Day.

“We are determined to keep that 100 per cent home record, we really want to keep building on that,” Swiel added.

“We want to get a result against Worcester too – we really haven’t been good away from home, we know that, and we’re desperate to get that first victory on the road.

“We’ve pointed that out within the group, and we need to keep the focus and momentum we create from home games into the away games.”