NEWPORT Gwent Dragons head coach Kingsley Jones opted to bite his lip after seeing a sky-high penalty count contribute to their second-half collapse against Harlequins in the LV= Cup.

The Dragons led 21-8 at half-time at Twickenham Stoop on Friday evening but saw the Quins come firing back with 23 unanswered points to take the spoils.

While the Dragons didn't help themselves by making more errors after the restart, they were blown off the park by referee Greg Macdonald meaning they were pinned in their own half and unable to stem the flow of points.

In a week where Crystal Palace boss Neil Warnock was fined £9,000 for comments about the officials, Jones was reluctant to go too far in expressing his frustration at the former Moseley fly-half's display.

"To be penalised 12 times to 1 in the second half, I've never known that in all my time in the game," said the former Wales flanker.

"These guys are professional rugby players and I can't conceive how they can give away 22 penalties compared to nine. At times it was frustrating but I don't want to get myself into trouble by saying too much."

The head coach was angry after an eight defeat out of 10 games but he was able to cheer the return to fitness of centre Ross Wardle and locks Andrew Coombs and Cory Hill while new South African recruit Brok Harris made a promising debut.

Kingsley and director of rugby Lyn Jones will hope that a strong display against the Ospreys in Bridgend in the LV= Cup will provide them with plenty of selection headaches for what will be a key Guinness Pro12 clash with Munster on November 22.

"It was great to see Ross back out there (after six months out with a knee injury) and he looked really and so did Brok in his first game at tighthead," said Jones.

"Brok has been here five minutes but you don't play that many games of Super Rugby (93) without being a good player. He showed glimpses of what he will bring and his scrummaging was good.

"There were some good displays with (hooker) Elliot Dee doing well again, (fly-half) Dorian Jones' kicking game was really good and (wing) Ashton Hewitt worked his socks off and tackled everything in sight.

"It was an excellent showing by the team for 40 minutes but there were too many errors in the second half, with the penalty count not helping.

"But we are going into the Ospreys game in a lot better shape than we were a week ago and have found out a lot about plenty of players."