When John Kingston took charge at Harlequins last year he turned to Arsene Wenger for advice. The Arsenal manager asked him how he would improve the club, and Kingston said discipline was one issue on his mind.

That conversation helped Kingston formulate the club’s disciplinary code — one which Marland Yarde fell foul of and led to the England wing’s exit from the club last month.

Yarde joined Sale and while his departure removed an international back from the Quins armoury, Kingston remains convinced he had no choice. Yarde missed three training sessions this season and his failure to stick to the disciplinary guidelines led to his exit.

When Kingston took over last year, he sought advice about how to instil the kind of discipline he felt was needed to take the club forward.

He said: “If you then start allowing people to behave outside the established framework, getting away with things, then like children they won’t change, unless you have some consequences.

“What I have told the group after this situation is that no one — including me — is too big for the club. It is about Quins before self.

“I am lucky to know Arsene Wenger and I met him when I was offered this position. Arsene asked me what was the one thing I felt was needed to move things forward, and I said discipline.

“I was talking about doing the right thing at the right time. You are never going to do it all the time, but it is important to strive to achieve that aim. In team sport it gives you an edge and I want us to become champions of England again with an environment I am proud of.”

Wenger has a code of conduct where players are fined £1,000 punishment for failing to attend a home game they are not involved in without the manager’s permission while they can be fined £100 for having a newspaper, laptop or mobile in the medical room. Club captain Per Mertesacker is the debt collector and fines are doubled if not collected within seven days.

It is five years since Quins won the title and Kingston, whose side host Saracens on Sunday, set about establishing the disciplinary system at the heart of the club.

He said: “There are four steps; first a conversation about a poor choice being made, secondly — my wife has to take credit for this — there is the Quins community service. I referenced this with Arsene, who felt that taking people’s time away from them was more important in the world we operate in rather than money.

“We make sure the penalty will benefit the club, so I decide on a number of hours, and that could be time spent on the phone asking fans why they had not renewed their season tickets or helping clean the seats at the ground. One international said his back really hurt after cleaning seats, and I pointed out that it was someone’s job every week. No one is too big for those jobs and they hate doing it outside their normal hours.

“The third step is selection, and the fourth is the word I did not want to get to, which is severance. I remember asking Arsene how you decide on a selection or a severance situation and when is the right time to take that kind of action? He made it clear the decision had to be for the good of the group. Don’t do it because you feel better in an instinctive moment.”

Armed with Wenger’s advice Kingston introduced his system, but he admits the Yarde situation constituted a failure on both sides. However, while he regrets having to take the decision, Yarde had to go.

“We have something called ‘the culture club’ at Quins, the senior group of players, and I can canvass their opinion,” said Kingston. “A lot of the transgressions — late for training or turning up with wrong kit — are dealt with by captain James Horwill and his senior players. If it is something more then I will be asked to deal with it. You could see the departure of Marland as a failure. I hugely regret that it had to go that way, but you cannot have the players running the environment.”