Henry Slade showed his liking for the big moment by landing a last-gasp penalty as Exeter Chiefs preserved their year-long unbeaten league record at Sandy Park.
Tries by Louis Rees-Zammit and Seb Atkinson had threatened to help Gloucester drive out of Devon with all five points but a 45-metre kick from Slade, the Chiefs centre, sailed between the posts to seal a 25-24 win.
Slade was the shock omission from Steve Borthwick’s England squad for the World Cup but in front of Richard Hill, the England team manager, he sent a reminder to the head coach of what he can do. He also kept the crowd waiting by nearly using up all of the 90 seconds on the shot clock for the kick that made it four out of four at home this season and pushed Exeter up to third in the table.
It was a decent end to a week in which it emerged that the Exeter players and staff had received their October pay ten hours later than normal, which Rob Baxter, the club’s director of rugby, confirmed was no more than an admin error.
Slade kicked ten points in all and created one try. The 30-year-old is forming a blossoming centre partnership with Joe Hawkins, who had his best game in an Exeter shirt. The Welshman, who arrived from the Ospreys in the summer, was the go-to man to carry the ball up in midfield, hit some nice lines and possesses a howitzer boot from hand — even into the Devon winds.
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“Henry is the guy who is going to hold his nerve in those sorts of situations, because he has been there and done it and he did that today,” Baxter said. “He might have been one of the guys playing with a lot of weight on his shoulders the last couple of seasons. He is free of that now and it is bringing the best out of him.
“By a long margin, I thought that was Joe’s best game today. He looked strong on the ball, took good kick decisions and looked like the kind of player we wanted to sign. He has had a few niggles since he turned up but today he showed there is a lot there and we are going to get a lot out of him.
Gloucester had looked home and hosed at 24-15 up with four minutes remaining after Rees-Zammit and Atkinson had injected pace and energy into a drab game. The Wales wing’s turn and quick finish followed the centre Atkinson’s close-range score.
The topsy-turvy nature of the league was evident when Exeter slipped from first to sixth on the back of a defeat at Northampton Saints last week, before kicking off here. Gloucester, meanwhile, were still reeling from three straight defeats and conceding 35 second-half points in front of their home crowd to Bath in the previous round. So this near miss was a savage blow for George Skivington, the Gloucester head coach.
“It stings,” he said. “But not as much as last week stung. The boys were brilliant, we could have scored another three tries and our exit game was not as good as it could have been but in terms of how I feel about the group, everybody in the building, I feel a lot better than I did last week.”
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And Gloucester were on the back foot straight away having to turn the ball over on their own line twice in the first five minutes to save their skins. They had Jack Clement, the No 8, in the sin-bin after two minutes for a high hit on Rusi Tuima, and Chiefs made the extra man pay when lock Tuima, steamed over after being fed from a scrum by Tom Cairns, the scrum half.
Tuima was then sent to the sin-bin himself when he clashed heads with Gloucester hooker George McGuigan, who was trying to support Clement, the ball carrier. Both men had their heads high when they went into contact, but Tuima was the one shown a yellow card by Ian Tempest, the referee.
Gloucester lost the flanker Albert Tuisue when he hobbled off with an injury, but they levelled the scores when Clement went under the posts unopposed after cutting a good line, helped by Chris Harris’s decoy hoodwinking the defence.
But Exeter, whose scrum was all over the visiting side, pulled clear again when Slade broke from the halfway line and his inside ball found captain Dafydd Jenkins, who galloped to the line to make it 12-7 at the break.
The game then slowed before Atkinson played a tip pass to the Gloucester full back Santiago Carreras who found Ollie Thorley. The wing had plenty of work to do but turned on the gas and sped through the home defence to make it 12-12 with the final quarter looming.
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Rees-Zammit and Atkinson then did their thing before Exeter’s replacement scrum half Stu Townsend gave Exeter hope when he jumped through a goalline ruck to make it a two-point game. And when the prop Harry Elrington was penalised for not rolling away, Slade made him pay.
Scorers: Exeter: Tries Tuima (9min), Jenkins (33), Townsend (76). Cons Slade 2. Pens Slade 2 (61, 80). Gloucester: Tries Clement (29), Thorley (56), Rees-Zammit (66), S Atkinson (70). Cons Barton 2.
Exeter Chiefs T Wyatt; I Feyi-Waboso, H Slade, J Hawkins, B Hammersley (O Woodman 63, W Haydon-Wood 65); H Skinner, T Cairns (S Towsend 61); S Sio (N Abuladze 51), J Yeandle (D Frost 51), E Painter (J Iosefa-Scott 51), R Tuima (sin-bin 22-32, L Pearson 61), D Jenkins (capt), E Roots (R Vintcent 64), J Vermeulen, A Davis.
Gloucester S Carreras; L Rees-Zammit, C Harris, S Atkinson, O Thorley; G Barton, M Young (S Varney 63); M Vivas (H Elrington 55), G McGuigan (S Socino 55), F Balmain (K Gotovtsev 55), F Clarke, M Alemanno, A Tuisue (F Thomas 17), L Ludlow, J Clement (sin-bin 2-12)
Referee I Tempest. Attendance 9,793
