EX The FACTOR
CHIEFS IN DRAMATIC TITLE WIN
SEVEN years and a day since they were promoted to the A viva Premiership, Exeter Chiefs made history at Twickenham as they were deservedly crowned champions courtesy of Gareth Steenson’s golden boot.
The Exeter captain and fly-half, one of only three survivors in Exeter’s match-day squad to have been with the club all the way through their astonishing journey to the top of English rugby, kicked the winning penalty with less than two minutes of extra time left on the clock.
Earlier Steenson had kicked a penalty with less than two minutes of normal time to play after Wasps had looked destined for their first Premiership title in al most a decade. But when No 8 Nathan Hughes was penalised by referee JP Doyle at a breakdown, the Irish fly-half defied blustery conditions to force the game into extra time with the scores locked at 20-20.
And then, in blazing heat, Steenson again showed an icy-cool nerve to kick a penalty from 15 metres out on the left hand side after Doyle had penalised the Wasps prop Matt Mullan for collapsing a scrum five metres out.
Ninety-eight minutes after kick off, Exeter’s delirious players embraced as director of rugby Rob Baxter and his men realised a dream t hat f ew would have believed possible when they first broke into the top flight.
Baxter was a player in those days but has been instrumental, along with chief executive Tony Rowe, in propelling the Devon club i nto English rugby’s stratosphere.
‘It’s been a long journey getting here,’ said Baxter. ‘ People have asked if I felt like I was dreaming but anyone involved knows how hard we worked. It’s never felt like a dream to me.’
A week after seeing off defending champions Saracens in a thrilling semi-final at Sandy Park, Baxter’s men once again proved their extraordinary never-say-die attitude which epitomises the culture which will see this club go even further.
A year after being crushed by Saracens in their first final, Exeter learned their lessons in superb fashion to successfully finish off a campaign which had seen them finish the regular season sitting on top of the Premiership pile.
It completes a remarkable rise for the West Countrymen whose victory here yesterday will surely silence those who believe that ring-fencing the Premiership is the only way forward.
Jack Nowell and Phil Dollman scored first-half tries for the Chiefs, who looked set to pull clear at 14-3 after less than 30 minutes.
But Wasps rallied strongly either side of half- time with tries from Jimmy Gopperth, who also kicked two conversions and two penalties, and Elliot Daly after the break.
Steenson, though, is the heartbeat of Exeter.
He kicked a 64th-minute penalty before oddly turning down a chance to level proceedings with 11 minutes left, only to be given a shot at redemption when Hughes, who had an otherwise excellent game, was penalised by Doyle.
The Exeter captain slotted the kick from in front of the posts from 30 metres before stepping up again to kick the club he has served so magnificently in recent seasons into the history books.
‘If I’m being honest, I said a prayer to my dad upstairs and he helped me with the last one I think,’ said Steenson, whose father John passed away in 2007, the year before Gareth j oined Exeter Chiefs from t he Cornish Pirates.
‘I’m really delighted with it. I‘m not sure I’d have believed this was possible the year we broke into the Premiership.’
So extraordinary has been Exeter’s rise, their only goal now can be to aim for European glory.
‘We want to be the best in England and we want to be the best in Europe,’ said Rowe.
‘ That’s my ambition and that’s Rob’s ambition.’
Baxter, the English game’s most impressive director of rugby, and someone who will surely one day make the step up to international coaching, was close to tears at the final whistle after guiding the club so i mpressively over t he years.
‘My wife and family have probably taken the brunt of what we go through down the years and they were here today,’ he said. ‘It’s a special day for the club.’ This remarkable season is all the more impressive for the fact that the Chiefs lost four of their first seven Premiership games after, by their own admission, resting on their laurels after reaching their firstever final last year.
‘The defeat in the final last year was probably the toughest loss to take,’ said Baxter. ‘It’s been a long journey getting here. We needed some stiff words after the start we made to this season.
‘The players reacted magnificently to that. We’ll have cider and pasties on the way home tonight.’
While Exeter will rightly celebrate and look towards even greater things in the future, spare a thought for Dai Young’s Wasps.
Four years after almost going bankrupt, they have also been on a remarkable journey of their own to move to Coventry and turn their fortunes around. With less than two minutes left of normal time they thought they had won their first Premiership title since 2008 but it was not to be. Steenson had other ideas. ‘We’ve had a fantastic season but that hurts,’ Young said. ‘We were within a minute and 20 seconds of pulling that off.’ Wasps will come again. For Exeter, this is their time. As sporting fairytales go, it will take some beating.