Exeter Chiefs got their pre-season campaign underway with a 45-19 victory over Championship side London Scottish on Saturday, with fly-half Will Haydon-Wood shining brightest. Ben Hammersley, Nick Lilley, Noah Fenton, Jack Yeandle (2), Kane James, and debutant Jimmy Roots scored the Premiership club’s tries as they dusted off the rust after a long summer. Josh Hodge scored 10 points with the boot from five successful conversions.
Ioan Rhys-Davies, Austin Wallis andAlex Wardell touched down for the second-tier visitors with Tom Wilstead landing a pair of conversions. READ MORE: Paul Brown-Bampoe hat-trick helps Exeter Chiefs beat Cornish Pirates Both fly-halves were the creators for the opening two tries. Scottish opened the scoring after former Bristol Bears man Wilstead passed back inside to his number eight Rhys-Davies who showed good pace to race in from 18m out.
Wilstead converted. Exeter ’s opening score was a thing of beauty as Haydon-Wood switched the direction of the attack and threaded a pin-point wide miss pass over the visiting defence for Hammersley to run onto and score in the corner, just like an NFL quarterback throwing to the corner. Hodge added the extras from out wide and into the wind.
The game continued to see-saw with the visitors catching Chiefs napping defending a lineout allowing them to throw short and escape down the tramlines to put hooker Wallis over the line. But Chiefs hit back with two unwanted first-half injury replacements striking. First .