Exeter Hold On To Beat Wasps

Exeter managed to hold on and record their first win of the season in a very close fought 30-26 victory over London Wasps.

Tom James crossed the Wasps try line twice to secure the Chiefs’ first win of the season; whilst Wasps have got off to the worst possible start, with two losses two their name against Harlequins in week one and now Exeter.

After James’ first try and the impressive boot of Gareth Steenson, it was Exeter who led 16-12 at half time. Veteran fly half Andy Goode kept Wasps in the hunt, but another try from James and James Scaysbrook sealed the home side’s win.

The only consolation for the losing Wasps side was late tries from young winger Christian Wade and Ashley Johnston for a losing bonus point.

Exeter were looking to improve on their first fixture of the season where they comprehensively went down 38-11 to Northampton Saints. Fans could have been forgiven for thinking a similar result was on the cards as the Chiefs were soon down 6-0, after two penalties from Wasps’ Andy Goode. Goode, who missed a last-minute conversion in round one’s 16-15 defeat to Harlequins, was on target from the off.

Exeter began to make even more errors, before they eventually got on the scoreboard from a Steenson penalty. The addition of points seemed to spark life into the heart of the Exeter side, as James finished off an impressive move to cross the Wasps line for the first try of the game.

The respective fly-halves exchanged penalties once again, before Wasp’s Ashley Johnson was sin-binned for a high tackle. Steenson converted the additional penalty; however, the visitors did respond well to being a man down, with Goode converting another penalty.

Exeter returned to the changing room with a 16-12 lead at the break.

A costly mistake from Christian Wade, who failed to gather an Exeter grubber, left an opening for Scaysbrook to cross the line and put 9 points between the sides. Following this, James sprinted through the line for his second score of the day to seal victory for the Chiefs.

A spirited Wasps fightback, with tries from Wade and Johnson, got Wasps close to Exeter, but unfortunately for Dai Young’s men, not close enough.

Wasps lacked ambition throughout the game and have looked distinctly average so far this season.

Wasps’ director of Rugby told the BBC that "We are still a young pack and I thought we had the edge in the scrum as well as challenging them in the line-out.

"We were very wary of their contact area but we controlled that as well so I was quite pleased with that.

"In fairness to Exeter I thought they had real bite in their defence, we struggled to get any real penetration, we tended to be quite lateral in our attack, we struggled to break them down and when they had opportunities they took them.

"We are a little disappointed with one or two of the tackles we fell off but in fairness you have to put your hand up sometimes and say that on occasions their attack stretched us so we are a little disappointed in some of the points we gave away.

"We have had two bonus-point losses, at one stage today even the bonus-point loss looked unlikely, but we came back to sneak a bonus point at the end."

Wasps will need to improve as they face Sale Sharks in Manchester on Friday night, still looking for their first win of the season. Exeter, on the other hand, will take an enormous amount of confidence from their first win of the season to the Madjeski Stadium to face London Irish on Saturday.

Line-Ups:

Exeter: Dollman; Whitten, Hill, Shoemark, T. James; Steenson, Thomas; Sturgess, Yeandle, Tui, Mumm, Welch, Johnson, Scaysbrook, Ewers.

Replacements: Jess for Hill (62), Slade for Steenson (70), Lewis for Thomas (62), Moon for Sturgess (59), Whitehead for Yeandle (62), Mitchell for Tui (67), White for Scaysbrook (65).

Not Used: Hayes.

Wasps: Masi; Wade, C. Bell, Hayter, Bassett; Goode, Simpson; Mullan, Lindsay, Cooper-Woolley, Launchbury, Palmer, Johnson, Jones, Jackson.

Replacements: T. Bell for Masi (77), Davies for Simpson (52), McIntyre for Mullan (66), Cochrane for Lindsay (57), Taylor for Cooper-Woolley (66).

Not Used: Cannon, Thompson, Jacobs.