As the fortunes of London Wasps, the Guinness Premiership champions, have fallen this season, those of Harlequins, their bitter rivals, have soared. It is they who have flirted with the top of the table, they who will play on the ritzy stage of the Stade de France on Saturday in front of 75,000 people, they who have added Sean Fitzpatrick, one of New Zealand's most distinguished players, to their board as a non-executive director.

Not content with playing Stade Français in the Heineken Cup in one rugby capital, Harlequins hope to attract 50,000 to Twickenham on December 27 for their Premiership match against Leicester. Ticket sales have passed 30,000, testimony to the work since eight years ago when barely 3,000 people would arrive at the Twickenham Stoop to watch.

Mark Evans, the Harlequins chief executive, denies that Stade are the model for his plans. “Max Guazzini [the Parisian club's owner] has changed the face of French rugby, he has made club rugby matter on a national scale, not just a regional one,” Evans said. “But Paris is not a sporting city - there's only one football club and a couple of rugby ones.

“For us there have been other influences, the traditional Boxing Day fixtures like Leicester v the Barbarians, Cardiff v Pontypridd. The ‘big game' at Twickenham is about trying to create a family occasion over the festive season.

“We're trying to see if one of the clubs in the South East, which is not a traditional rugby area, make a breakthrough, find a tipping point where we can have a mass following like Leicester, Northampton, Munster. This month offers a huge challenge for Harlequins on the pitch - two games with Stade Français, games with Northampton and Leicester - but a massive opportunity off it.

“You can't overestimate how alien it is to people in this part of England to watch club rugby, to understand that they can rock up to the Stoop and buy a ticket for the match. This is not rugby-watching heartland, but it will be and our game on December 27 will accelerate the process.”

The average attendance has grown year on year since Evans arrived in 2000, the only blip being the season when Harlequins were relegated to National Division One four years ago. Even then the groundwork laid by the club's community team paid off and Evans is emphatic that success on the field is not the only ingredient. He suggests that the Ospreys, Sale Sharks and Wasps have yet to find the secret to attracting bigger crowds.

After six years of professionalism Harlequins were losing £2million a year. Now they break even and view the future with optimism. There will be even more cause for that if their players can shrug off the impact of thousands of flag-waving Frenchmen, Guazzini's dancing girls and circus acts and return from Paris with the bacon on Saturday night.