This is what dreams are made of and for Harlequins Marcus Smith he certainly made the perfect introduction to his senior England career at Twickenham last Sunday, writes Ziad Chaudry.

The highly-touted 20-year-old contributed 26 points in the hosts highly entertaining 51-43 victory over the Barbarians.

And Harlequins very own Philippines-born 'Thrilla from Manila' was happy with his debut performance.

"I'm really happy," he said.

"I always said at start of the week about creating memories as a group.

"We know as a group, we had a massive challenge against a very strong Barbarians side and to come out on top was really pleasing."

Richmond and Twickenham Times:

And Smith, who played alongside fellow Quins club mates Alex Dombrandt and Joe Marchant, believes he still has a lot to improve on his game despite the praising reviews he received from England head coach Jim Mallinder.

"I try not to think too far ahead," he admits.

"If you get too far ahead of yourselves then you stop improving.

"I try and think of things I did well and things I'm not doing so well and try improve week by week and not month by month."

And Smith believes Harlequins can improve on their fifth place finish in this season's Gallagher Premiership and compete for silverware next season.

"We were disappointed by the way we ended our season," he added.

"We should have segmented our season in the top four, we all knew that.

"We were brilliant this year but we have to be better next year.

"That desire we all have we had a little taste of it. We had a taste in the Challenge Cup semi-final and now we want to go one further and compete for silverware where we believe Quins belong."

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