Match Report – Newcastle 14 – 20 Exeter

Exeter beat Newcastle 20-14 at Kingston Park to claim a first away win in the Premiership for over a year; Newcastle have lost every game they’ve had so far this season and are grounded at the bottom of the Premiership table; “The size of the challenge is pretty clear,” says Alex Codling

Exeter earned their first Gallagher Premiership away win in over a year with a 20-14 victory over Newcastle at Kingston Park.

After a frantic start, tries from Jamie Blamire and Matias Moroni helped the hosts, who were backed by a pre-match card display from Newcastle United fan group Wor Flags, hold a 14-8 advantage at the interval.

However, Henry Slade and Josh Isoefa-Scott dotted down after the break to complete a turnaround and condemn their opponents to a seventh defeat in as many league games.

Henry Slade scored Exeter’s second try

Victory meant the away side ended a barren run of 10 consecutive Premiership losses on the road, a run stretching back to October 7 last year, and also moved them back into the top four.

An unchanged Chiefs side travelled to the north-east on the back of a last-minute 25-24 win over Gloucester at Sandy Park.

Meanwhile, the hosts made seven changes to their starting 15, including a first Premiership start for 20-year-old fly-half Louie Johnson.

Newcastle got off to the worst possible start when Immanuel Feyi-Waboso touched down with less than 40 seconds on the clock but they responded five minutes later when Jamie Blamire took an offload and sidestepped a challenge to score.

Matias Moroni then ran onto a chip from Iwan Stephens on the left to get the third try of a hectic opening seven minutes.

Slade, an England back, struck the opening blow of the second half in the 63rd minute, excellent work from winger Ben Hammersley giving him a simple finish.

He missed his third kick of the game with the conversion attempt but his side had all of the momentum and capitalised a few minutes later, Iosefa-Scott scoring from close range to give the visitors lead.

Slade added the extras to stretch the lead to 20-14 with 10 minutes to play and a losing bonus point was scant consolation for the hosts, who could not find the try they needed to move in front. Newcastle remain rooted to the bottom of the table.

“It’s just the errors that are killing us. We’re a new group, we make mistakes and the big challenge is when you’ve got a settled group is to get back on the front foot,” said Newcastle head coach Alex Codling.

“We have a habit at the moment of making a mistake and compounding it with another one.

“The size of the challenge is pretty clear and I’ll keep taking it head on.”