Catalans Dragons fortunately failed to shake their winning habit, even as poorly as they played for all bar the last ten minutes of what could have been labelled Millennium Mogadon. Harlequins had the game in the bag and threw it away, as Julien Touxagas launched a comeback from 16-6 down, snapping up Chad Randall's pass as it bounced from the hands of a stunned Danny Orr.

As the grateful recipient, Touxagas put his head down for 90 metres and just had the legs on the pursuing Ricki Sheriffe to give Thomas Bosc a straightforward conversion. With less than three minutes on the clock, Bosc delightfully chipped over the top of the Harlequins' defence for Justin Murphy to beat two tacklers and landed the conversion to stretch the Perpignan side's unbeaten league run to eight matches yesterday.

It was a thrilling climax to the most numbing encounter of the weekend, in which neither team seemed capable of getting beyond first gear and the players gave the impression of wading in treacle. The Catalans continued to stumble their way through the game, but with the impetus of Touxagas's try, they found the momentum to consolidate their second place, five points behind Leeds Rhinos.

In suffering a third successive defeat,Harlequins created their own downfall. They had responded well to Jason Croker cutting inside three defenders for the opening try. Michael Worrincy stepped through some flimsy tackling from a tap penalty and Randall neatly put Scott Hill into a yawning gap. Hill combined with Jon Wells to put Chris Melling clear for a third try in the 50th minute, but hanging on for the last half-hour simply invited trouble.

In a terse press conference, Brian McDermott, the Harlequins coach, disagreed with Mick Potter, his Catalans counterpart, that his side had deserved to win. “I'm just asking questions on whether the boys are enjoying living in London too much or enjoying rugby league first and foremost,” he said. Potter said: “I wouldn't say it was our worst performance but we had to do something good to come up with the win.”