It wasn’t the richest Devonian tea-time feast, but it was raw and colourful and eventually tasted pretty sweet. A late try gave Exeter a bonus point to complete a fine performance and for the watching Eddie Jones there was much to admire in the work of Jack Nowell and Thomas Waldrom.
Sandy Park turned very windy for the tea-time kick-off, with Clermont enjoying its benefits in the first half. Win the ball and they could kick from one end to the other – a penalty by Scott Spedding from 52 metres would rattle the top half of a post. The problem was the winning the ball bit. The Clermont lineout had no Benjamin Kayser to find it – the hooker was one of their many injuries – and Exeter picked it off at will.
The home side willingly ran all their possession and Nowell was a constant threat, gliding round the venerable Aurélien Rougerie. Gareth Steenson mixed up the passes and the No8, Waldrom, ran with his usual purpose and distributed with a newfound pinpoint accuracy.
It all looked promising until they reached the breakdown. Here they displeased John Lacey, the Irish referee, who penalised them.
The wind was not a factor here, but it influenced the half. Could compromised Clermont score enough points with the blast at their backs? David Strettle, exiled from his homeland and the England camp, ran from deep and from much closer range Morgan Parra and Camille Lopez attracted defenders to themselves and worked Hosea Gear into clear space to score.
Gear soon returned the compliment with a sweet pass out of contact, releasing Noa Nakaitaci. The Fiji-born French Test player chipped over the last defender and Rougerie won the chase to the line.
Two converted tries against Gareth Steenson’s penalty represented a solid lead, but the wind was lashing the flags, and when Waldrom rolled over from a driving maul, the four-point deficit at the interval counted almost as a healthy lead for the team that would be blown downfield in the second half.
Olly Woodburn chased and caught the kick-off and Exeter were immediately throwing themselves at the line, only to be pinged again at the breakdown. Undeterred, they were soon back on the attack, quite happy to take the kick and lineout option from penalty of their own. Like Waldrom’s passing, Exeter have been honing new skills. Their driving maul is tighter, lower and Ian Whitten was able to shadow it and then time his run into midfield. The Northern Irishman stayed on his feet through the tackles, taking play into tank range – striking distance for Waldrom. He delivered as usual, roly-poly and lethal.
There was still danger on the other side. Gear could cause alarm with his passes and Peceli Yato was soon storming down the middle of the field, a large Fijian back-row pursued by two shaven-headed Exeter wingers. To their relief, they caught him and Waldrom was soon teasing his team back into promising positions, only for Lacey to penalise their work again after the tackle. Phil Dollman was sent to the bin for the team’s serial offending.
For no good reason, Gear suddenly starting losing the ball – perhaps he was trying to force the passes now. Waldrom went off, roundly applauded and replaced by Tom Johnson, who immediately sprang forth from the back of his first scrum and set up the approach to the tank-range. Only this time there was no Waldrom and the ball was turned over.
When they returned not long after, Yato was shown a yellow card for a high tackle on the replacement scum-half, Dave Lewis. Down to seven forwards, Clermont were bound to yield, as they did when Don Armand, a South African about to be eligible for Eddie Jones’s England, crashed through.
Having not scored in the second half, Clermont tried to grind their way to a losing bonus-point try. This time, the referee gave the put-in to Exeter. It set up the escape and the advance to the other end and the final try for Mitch Lees, a driving Aussie of a second-row, part of a special piece of Devon. Clermont away come next, but there is a durable togetherness about this Exeter outfit, a team going places.
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