It was Exeter’s 100th match in the Premiership but the figure that counted was the number of mistakes they made in a patchy display that showed how far they have come since reaching the top flight and the distance they have to go. They took the lead three times but never held it for more than five minutes and if there was not quite a whiff of complacency against opponents who had lost five league games out of six and were stuck in the bottom half of the table, there was a lack of humility.
Exeter turned down three kickable penalties in a first-half they dominated, and while Gareth Steenson hit the post with a conversion 10 minutes from the end that would have given the Chiefs the lead for the fourth time, it was not that they had more faith in their driving game than their kicker. They believed Gloucester would buckle under pressure and from the outset launched a wave of attacks.
There were two problems to this strategy. The first was that Gloucester, for all their ordinariness when in possession and a slightly disjointed look generally, got stuck in, appreciating the match for the derby it was. They had lost three of the past four games between the sides in the Premiership. Exeter let everything hang out, but the more they showed, the more untidy they became.
They wasted three try-scoring opportunities in the first-half after Gloucester had taken the lead with a fourth-minute Greig Laidlaw penalty, Matt Jess knocking on as he went to pick up Henry Slade’s chip to the line to blow the best of them. There was a carelessness to their play: passes were misdirected with too many going behind intended receivers and handling was poor, especially in contact, but the biggest single area of weakness was at the breakdown where the Chiefs’ presentation of the ball was shocking for a side with pretensions of finishing in the play-off places.
It cost them. They had regained the lead for the third time as the game entered the final quarter and looked to have finally subdued Gloucester. The Chiefs were on the visitors’ 22 and looking to move blind from the ruck when the ball appeared without an Exeter player close enough to pick it up. Suddenly, Matt Kvesic was leading a counterattack, kicking to the home line where Jack Nowell was forced to concede a five-metre scrum by Charlie Sharples from which Ben Morgan forced his way over the line.
Exeter, six points behind, did score again when their No8, Thomas Waldrom, was ruled by the television match official to have grounded the ball on the line after ploughing his way through a scrum of defenders. Steenson’s kick would have put the Chiefs back in front but with nine minutes to go they had ample time to hurt themselves again. Gloucester’s relief at the final whistle was palpable but, for all their defiance and superiority up front, it was a match Exeter lost, several times.
Their director of rugby, Rob Baxter, lamented his side’s lack of caution, which he attributed to a bluntness in attack in Bath the week before and a desire to atone, but then they were playing a side they recognised as accomplished, which was not so against another West Country rival. The highest crowd of the season rolled up in expectation of victory and the atmosphere seemed to be celebratory from the start, but everything in the Premiership has to be earned, as Exeter have come to appreciate.
The party mood had turned to quiet 45 minutes in when Billy Twelvetrees, who like his England colleague Morgan had a mixed evening, dropped a goal from 45 metres to put Gloucester 9-0 ahead. Exeter responded with two tries in two minutes, Nowell breaking a poor Morgan tackle and stepping past Laidlaw to score under the posts before Jess intercepted Twelvetrees’s pass on his own 22 and won the sprint to the line.
Exeter had been vulnerable on restarts and they immediately lost the lead they had taken so long to secure. Steenson’s clearing kick was charged down by Tom Savage who picked up the bouncing ball to score and Steenson kicked two penalties to Laidlaw’s one before Morgan struck the decisive blow.
Exeter remain fourth but, despite the skill of Slade, who has so much time on the ball, and the threat of their back three, they are not play-off contenders on this evidence. It was their third successive Premiership defeat after a run of four successive victories, the first sign that a side respectful of where it had come from had suddenly got ahead of itself.
Exeter: Dollman; Nowell, Slade, Hill (Wjitten 62), Jess; Steenson, Chudley (Thomas 56); Moon (Rimmer 57), Yeandle (Cowan-Dickie 57), Low (Francis 54), Mumm (capt), Lees (Sexton 45), Ewers, White, Waldrom.
Tries: Nowell, Jess, Waldrom. Cons: Steenson 2. Pens: Steenson 2.
Gloucester: Sharples; Halaifonua, Atkinson, Twelvetrees (capt), May; Hook, Laidlaw; Wood, Dawidiuk (Lutui 54), Afoa (Knight 74), Savage, Palmer, Kalamafoni (Evans 54), Kvesic, Morgan.
Tries: Savage, Morgan. Cons: Laidlaw 2. Pens: Laidlaw 3. Drop: Twelvetrees.
Referee: Andrew Small
Attendance: 12,621
