Wasps vs Exeter match report: Joe Simpson's try of the season is reminder to England

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Wasps started the day talking enthusiastically about their ground-breaking move in the financial market – a sterling bond issue that could generate upwards of £30m, if the pin-striped projections are accurate – and ended it celebrating a Big Bang on the pitch, courtesy of Joe Simpson.

The scrum-half’s belief-beggaring try four minutes from time may turn out to be the act that pushes the club into the Premiership semi-finals, in which case it will be worth a king’s ransom in any currency you care to name.

As the final quarter unfolded in front of another 16,000-plus crowd in Coventry – back in the dim and distant past circa 2014, when the former European champions were slumming it in High Wycombe, they could not guarantee themselves a gate of 6,000 – Wasps’ chances of making the play-offs were looking more remote by the second.

Exeter were dominating all the areas that mattered and, having closed the gap to three points after finding themselves 13 to the bad shortly after the interval, they had the scent of victory in their nostrils.

At which point, the West Countrymen put boot to ball and saw Simpson, all 5ft 10in of him, pick the thing out of the air despite the attentions of a couple of Devonian behemoths.

He wriggled free of the human flotsam and jetsam on landing, accelerated into open field in the hope of finding a supporting runner on his shoulder, and then, as the realisation dawned that he was on his Jack Jones, he pinned back his ears even further, sprinting away from the covering Henry Slade and two-thirds of the Exeter back row before outpacing Tom James and bouncing his way over the line to claim the five points. Try of the season? The contest is not even close.

There has been some talk of Simpson, capped once during the last World Cup in 2011, making a late challenge for a place at this year’s tournament. We can expect a lot more of it now. David Young, his rugby director, has long argued that the 26-year-old broken-field specialist possesses the “point of difference” so often cited by the England head coach, Stuart Lancaster, as a key element of his selection policy, and yesterday, he reiterated that view in his own inimitable fashion. “I don’t know what more Joe can do, or what more I can say,” Young remarked, with meaning.

For his part, Simpson feels there is still a chance of catching Lancaster’s eye in time for next month’s World Cup training squad announcement. “I know I’m a long shot – I know there are other scrum-halves performing well,” he commented.

“But without the ‘point of difference’ people speak about, you can be found out at international level. You need someone who can come on and change a game late in the day and that might be me. I hope that try what showcased what I can do.”

That it did, with knobs on, but as Young argued, there was far more to Simpson’s performance than one spellbinding flash of individual brilliance in the wide open prairies. “I liked the way he managed things,” said the boss.

“I thought his tactical kicking was excellent. The try wasn’t an isolated example – he has a real knack of pulling something out for us when it’s needed – so the important thing for me was that he put his whole game together.”

Which was more than Exeter did in an alarmingly poor first-half display, shot through as it was with errors of every conceivable description and, more worrying still, bereft of the get-up-and-go spirit that has made them such a force in the top flight since their promotion in 2010.

“I’m a lot happier now than I was at the interval,” said their coach, Rob Baxter, who, as the dust settled on Simpson’s inspirational effort, saw his substitute outside-half Gareth Steenson rescue an important bonus point by dropping a goal in overtime.

“If you saw us against Northampton last time out, we were sharp and confident and physical. Here, we were edgy. I don’t want to be too critical because we’re still learning – you can’t get the steel without going through the furnace – but if we want to be playing exciting games rather than dead rubbers, we have to maximise what we do.”

Baxter could not begin to fathom why his team coughed up the softest of opening tries by allowing the Wasps No 8 Nathan Hughes to give full rein to his South Seas brand of dynamic flamboyance off the back of the first scrum and free up a route to the right corner for Christian Wade.

If he had a better understanding of the penalty try conceded on the stroke of the interval – Exeter were a man short in the scrum, Thomas Waldrom having been handed a harsh 10-minute banishment for a deliberate knock-on – he was still fuming about the unusual degree of pacifism on view.

Exeter toughened up enough to control much of the second period and reaped the reward through Waldrom’s mauling try and Slade’s quality goal-kicking, but they still needed that Steenson drop to take something home with them. Victory at Saracens next time could put them into the knockout stage at the expense of Wasps and Leicester, but to have a prayer, they will have to play a lot harder, and for a lot longer, than they did here.

Wasps: Tries Wade, penalty try, Simpson; Conversions Goode 3; Penalties Goode 4, Daly.

Exeter: Tries Chudley, Waldrom; Conversions Slade 2; Penalties Slade 4; Drop goal Steenson.

Wasps: A Masi; C Wade, E Daly (R Miller, 79), A Leiua, S Tagicakibau; A Goode, J Simpson; M Mullan (S McIntyre, 59), C Festuccia (E Shervington, 53), L Cittadini (J Cooper-Woolley, 49-68), J Gaskell (J Cannon, 59), K Myall, A Johnson (G Thompson, 49), J Haskell (capt), N Hughes.

Exeter: B McGuigan; I Whitten (T James, 58), J Nowell (James, 42-43), S Hill, M Jess; H Slade (G Steenson, 77), W Chudley (D Lewis, 77); B Moon (C Rimmer, 48-53), J Yeandle (L Cowan-Dickie, 53), T Francis (Rimmer, 69), D Mumm (capt), M Lees (D Welch, 53), D Ewers, K Horstmann (T Johnson, 58), T Waldrom.

Referee M Carley (Kent).