Andy Goode, a kicker who spent the first 40 minutes missing every barn door presented to him, finally came up trumps in the final seconds on Sunday, threading a 45-metre drop goal through the wind and rain of Adams Park to earn Wasps their first victory over Exeter in eight attempts.
"I'm old enough to know I was rubbish for the first half," said the 33-year-old fly-half who admitted he was surprised when the director of rugby, Dai Young, left him on for the second half. "I got a bollocking off Dai at half time and rightly so. But you brush yourself off and luckily I had a shot to win it."
Goode said he had changed his boots after a torrid first half which earned him jeers and boos in equal measure as tactical kicks went everywhere but where they were intended. "Fans pay their money and they can have their view but I didn't have to hear the crowd to know how I was playing in the first half," he said.
"Changing the boots possibly helped psychologically. I knew it was the last kick of the game and I took my time over it. I couldn't have hit it any better, to be honest. You know when you hit them they are going over and I'm lucky it did because I was pretty terrible for the rest of the game.
"I just hope people remember the drop goal," said Goode, who admitted he had been bailed out minutes earlier when another of his tactical kicks was charged down and Henry Slade appeared to have snatched the game for Exeter.
Instead the TMO ruled against the try, saying Slade had been held up by Joe Simpson, Wasps' try scorer in the 62nd minute, although photographs appeared to show the 20-year-old fly-half, making his first start for Exeter, had crossed the line as Simpson tackled him.
"Another TMO result that went against us," said Rob Baxter, the Exeter director of rugby, whose side have just one win from their past eight games and slip below Wasps in the league, after losing the second half almost as comprehensively as they took the first.
Wasps were caught napping after 62 seconds when the scrum-half Dave Lewis scampered over from the base of a ruck, not a million miles from where Simpson started his try-scoring run off the back of a scrum 61 minutes later.
With four days to go before England's head coach, Stuart Lancaster, rejigs his elite and Saxons squads in advance of the Six Nations it was noticeable that some on the existing lists were putting in solid shifts – none more so than the Exeter flanker Tom Johnson, who battered his way through tackle after tackle, while Elliot Daly, the Wasps full-back, issued a timely reminder about his goal-kicking prowess, landing one penalty from two metres inside his own half with at least five metres to spare.
A precision pass also came close to putting Tom Varndell over in the corner – Jack Nowell, another of the five Exeter representatives in the England Under-20 World Cup squad, hauled the former England wing down just a couple of metres short – but the Saxons full-back came close to blotting his copy book when he allowed a high, swirling kick from Tom James to bounce.
The Welsh wing bundled Daly back over his own line and for almost four minutes, while the resultant scrum was set and reset, Wasps creaked but held out. As Goode admitted, it was probably the turning point of the game. "If they had scored then it would have been a different ball game. I hate cliches, but it was a game of two halves."
Wasps Daly; Helu, Bell (capt), Hayter, Varndell; Goode, Simpson; Mullan, Festuccia, Cooper-Woolley (Taylor, 55), Launchbury, Palmer (Myall, 62), Johnson, Thompson, Pitman (Jackson, 68).
Try Simpson. Con Goode. Pens Daly, Goode 2 Drop-goal Goode.
Exeter Arscott; Nowell, Whitten, Shoemark (Hill 68), James; Slade, Lewis; Moon, Whitehead (Yeandle, 50), Tui (Brown, 38), Mumm (capt) Hanks (Welch, 50), Johnson, White (Horstmann, 69) Ewers.
Try Lewis. Con Slade. Pens Slade 3.
Referee Dean Richards (Newbury). Attendance 5,356.
