Last season’s finalists have moved off the bottom of the table. Indeed, this bonus-point win, very much a resumption of normal service, moves them back into the top half. Luke Cowan-Dickie scored a hat-trick of tries, having seemingly replaced Thomas Waldrom as the steerer of Exeter’s driven lineouts. Or perhaps the Tank Engine has seen fit to let someone else have a go at benefiting from the Premiership’s most reliable source of tries.
Not that this was a forward-orientated affair. Lachlan Turner had his best game yet in a Chiefs shirt and claimed two tries, but the home side’s relief was tempered by a red card for Tomas Francis, victim of a new directive to punish careless disruption of rucks. In trying to kick the ball, his shin connected with the back of Danny Care’s head.
“It’s difficult,” said Rob Baxter, his director of rugby. “One thing I can’t deny is that we were told at the start of the season that if you flash a foot into a ruck and it connects with someone’s head there’s a chance you’ll get a red card.”
It happened in the buildup to the second of two late tries by Quins, leaving them with eight minutes against 14 men to claim an unlikely bonus point. They did not come close on another concerning afternoon for the away side. Instead it was Exeter who finished the stronger.
After two defeats from two, those who had seen it all were preparing to nod their heads wisely and posit the difficulty of Exeter backing up a groundbreaking campaign. The jury was out, though. Defeats away to Wasps and at home to Saracens, however heavy the latter, are forgivable. A home match against out-of-sorts Harlequins, on the other hand – by that they might be judged.
Exeter burst into the game as if they knew it, deadly when they were allowed to play in the first half. And, boy, Quins let them do that.
Turner, the Wallaby international who joined midway through last season, was given a start at full-back, a chance he seized. In only the seventh minute, Exeter repeatedly tested Quins’ short side, with Don Armand and Will Chudley applying the deepest cuts, and Turner took a short ball to finish the game’s first try.
Quins converted two penalties in quick succession to take a fleeting lead, but it was not long before Turner came into the line to send Ian Whitten away. When Ollie Devoto was forced into touch just short, Quins threw straight to Cowan-Dickie, loitering at the back of the lineout, and he crashed over pretty much unopposed.
It was a painful sequence for the visitors – and not an isolated one, in this match or their season’s opening. Another followed pretty much from the restart, when Turner came into the line again, this time off first-phase possession, before taking a return ball from Ollie Woodburn to sprint home unchecked for his second. Life after Conor O’Shea is not going well for Quins. Beyond the odd thrust from Marland Yarde, the west London side looked flat in attack, although they did score from a lineout and drive to pull back to within six points.
But, after a 6-0 penalty count in Quins’ favour until then, referee Matt Carley started to penalise them in the final 10 minutes of the half and Exeter piled on 10 points. The Chiefs sent two of those penalties to the corner and drove Cowan-Dickie over for his second, before Gareth Steenson, captain on his return to the side, landed a penalty, after more outrageous generosity from the visitors, for a 29-13 lead at the break.
Cowan-Dickie’s third followed shortly after the restart to put the game to bed, before Quins’ late but unconvincing rally. Mike Brown, making his first start of the season after illness, put Care away, and then the latter took his blow to the head as Charlie Walker was worked over for a neat score in the last 10 minutes. No one at Quins will be fooled. None of their several England players could find a way into the game until the game had gone, and it was Exeter, a man short, who came closest to scoring in those final stages. Early days yet, but it seems those first two matches might have been no more than an aberration.
