European Cup rugby returns this week but the state of readiness of England’s World Cup squad members remains mixed. Leicester are not the only club whose senior men seem to be nursing a tournament hangover and their forwards, in particular, have little time to recover from this Devon mauling before Friday’s home game against Stade Français.
Despite having a 22-year-old prop, Alec Hepburn, making his first Premiership start Exeter still managed to make life consistently tough for a Leicester scrum containing two-thirds of England’s starting front-row in the shape of Dan Cole and Tom Youngs. “To come back from a disastrous World Cup is tough on those guys and there could be a bit of a hangover effect from that,” suggested Julian Salvi, himself an influential Tiger, prior to his summer move to Chiefs.
With Marcos Ayerza, new flanker Brendon O’Connor, Graham Kitchener and the club skipper Ed Slater to return there will soon be reinforcements but Leicester, along with Northampton, are not squeezing opponents into submission at the set-piece the way they used to. Nor did they have any English-qualified players as remotely as sharp as Jack Nowell, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Dave Ewers, all already pushing for Six Nations recognition.
For Test incumbents such as Ben Youngs, just back from ankle trouble, it makes it even harder to ease slowly back into form. The hope must be that the sight of big-name French opposition will rekindle the competitive juices of those who felt the full impact of England’s recent disappointment. “Because it was such a poor World Cup from England’s point of view there’s an added incentive to come back, go full throttle again and get back to winning ways,” added Salvi. “It works both ways.”
That certainly applies to Exeter’s leading lights, with Salvi singling out his back-row colleague Ewers as a ball-carrier who can give Europe the hurry-up in the coming weeks. “He’s a special player,” confirmed Salvi. “I’ve only been here a few weeks but you can already see the impact he has within the team. Give him the ball and you know he’s going to make yards. He’s a monster of a man and so powerful.
He’s a bit less well known in European terms but come next week I’m sure everyone will know about him.”
Ospreys will certainly encounter a confident Chiefs side in Swansea on Sunday. Rob Baxter’s men are now second in the league and their proactive defence has conceded just one try in their past three games, during which they have scored 13 themselves. They occupy the same pool as Clermont Auvergne and Bordeaux Bègles but are worth backing to reach the last eight for the first time. “If we’ve still got a fighting chance in the last two rounds after playing Clermont home and away I’ll be a very happy man,” said Baxter. “If that’s the case I think we’ll probably end up coming through.”
A try and 14 further points from the boot of Gareth Steenson proved more than enough to see off Leicester, for whom the Tongan full-back Telusa Veainu was the brightest spark. Richard Cockerill, the Tigers’ director of rugby, admitted his side had not deserved anything from the game but was unimpressed with the refereeing of the scrummage, where Wales’s Tomas Francis had a productive evening.
“There are issues within the game about scrummaging,” complained Cockerill. “If a tighthead goes on the angle, the loosehead looks like he’s turning in and gets penalised.
It’s happening a lot. Fair play to Francis, he got away with it. The referee didn’t know what he was looking at and couldn’t cope with it.
Referees are doing their best but they haven’t got a clue. This week in Europe we’ve got a French team and an Irish ref. What coin would you like to toss?”
Exeter Dollman (Jess, 45); Nowell, Slade, Whitten, Short (Hill, 57); Steenson (capt), Chudley; Hepburn (Rimmer, 77), Cowan-Dickie (Yeandle, 71), Francis (Low, 75), Lees, Welch, Ewers, Salvi (Waldrom, 63; Atkins, 77), Armand.
Try Steenson. Con Steenson. Pens Steenson 4.
Leicester Veainu; Thompstone (Balmain, 78), Smith, Bai (Betham, 49), Goneva (Tait, 60); Williams, B Youngs (Kitto, 68); Balmain (Brugnara, 56), T Youngs (capt; Thacker, 74), Cole (Pasquali, 74), Barrow, De Chaves (Pearce, 56), Croft (Fitzgerald, h/t), McCaffrey, Crane. Sin-bin Brugnara 76.
Pens Williams 2.
Referee G Garner (RFU). Attendance 10,102.
