Harlequins fly-half Nick Evans believes a winning momentum and last season’s Heineken Cup heroics can help get this season’s campaign off to a winning start in Wales.

Quins travel to Cardiff Blues on Saturday on the back of a last-ditch 13-11 Guinness Premiership win over Bath that bore striking similarities to last season’s dramatic home European triumph over Stade Francais.

Evans potted a simple conversion with the last kick of the game to secure his side’s first win of the season after number eight Nick Easter crashed over deep into stoppage time.

The former All Black notched a famous late drop-goal after 29 phases against the French glamour boys last December, as Quins went on to qualify for the Heineken Cup quarter-finals.

And the 29-year reckons both experiences can only stand his side in good stead for the challenges to come in Wales and at home over the next ten days.

“Momentum is the key. It is what we need. We’ve been a bit up and down recently, but hopefully we can now get that momentum going up,” he said.

“It doesn’t get any easier with Cardiff and Toulouse coming up, but you need momentum going into them.

“We’ve got the experience of what happened last year. The core group of the team know what it is like and what is needed to win games like those.

“If we can just get the momentum going up and confidence going up, we’ll soon be playing like we did last year.

“We can take the experience of what we did last year into the tough games coming up knowing we can put a performance on to the pitch.”

Quins have endured a slow start to the campaign with Evans admitting the fallout from events over the summer has been difficult to shake off in the opening month of the season.

Head coach John Kingston insists injuries and suspensions to Tom Williams and George Robson have dealt a relatively small squad a cruel blow, but believes the European Cup campaign brings with it the chance of a fresh start.

“There is no substitute for the elation of getting that win under their belts. That is a massive fillip for us going into the Heineken Cup,” he added.

“At least we can put a line under the first five games. We are nowhere near where we want to be, but we can put a line under it and say we’ll give oursleves three out of ten.

“We’ve been working against a number of injuries. We don’t actually have the biggest squad in the country and very quickly we are into players playing out of position.”

Harlequins next three games: Oct 10 Cardiff Blues (HCup, a), 17 Toulouse (HCup, h), 24 Worcester Warriors (a).