Gloucester coach Dean Ryan is hoping the new year will bring winning ways back to the west country club, who last season won the Powergen Cup and finished top of the Zurich Premiership table.

The Cherries and Whites have struggled this season with players on World Cup duty.

They have lost six league matches out of 13 but produced a sterling performance to snatch an 18-17 victory over Harlequins at a rain-soaked Kingsholm.

Tries from England centre Will Greenwood and prop Ceri Jones had helped Quins into a 14-5 lead, but prop Trevor Woodman added to the earlier score of Jame Simpson-Daniel (pictured) and Henry Paul booted two penalties to help Gloucester home.

Significantly the Quins clash was the first game where Ryan and director of rugby Nigel Melville have had all their players back.

"This has been the first week since the start of the season where we have been together as a squad," said Ryan.

"That means we can only move forward from here. It is not a turning point in the season but hopefully we can get better each week from now on. We know we are a talented side we have just been missing some key ingredients."

Melville added: "In the end we probably deserved to win against Harlequins. The game could have gone either way with the ball bouncing all over the place but we probably dominated territory towards the end of the game."