Northampton go top after remarkable comeback to overcome Exeter's 26-point lead

Exeter Chiefs 36 Northampton Saints 42

In a top of the table tussle for the ages, Northampton Saints staged a spirited second-half fightback to snatch a last-gasp victory at Chiefs’ fortress in an 11-try thriller. Titles are not won in January, but given the manner in which Phil Dowson’s side roared back after going 26-0 down, they can dare to dream.

Ollie Sleightholme was the star of the show for Northampton. For all their attacking flair, Chiefs struggled to contain Saints’ big-ball carrying threat out wide, whose hat-trick inspired the visitors to a dramatic win which saw them surge back to the Premiership summit.

The feted winger will naturally grab the headlines, but Saints’ personnel off the bench injected an energy that the visitors miserably lacked in a dire first half, when they conceded four tries inside half an hour.

Yet they more than made up for it after the break, with Rory Hutchinson’s last-gasp score condemning Exeter to their first home defeat in the league since October 2022. “You come to a place like this and you get tested - that’s what we want - we want to know where we’re at,” said Dowson. “We talked about the composure when we went behind, but we stuck at it.”

Chiefs, who leaked points when they lost Dafydd Jenkins and Henry Slade to yellow cards either side of the break, looked to have preserved their remarkable 23-game premiership winning streak at home when Rusi Tuima plundered a try after a sequence of offloading mastery that involved Greg Fisilau, Ethan Roots and Tom Cairns. But in a show of defiance, a hungry Saints side wanted it more.

After ripping into Saints early doors, Chiefs will rue throwing away such a colossal lead. Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, Exeter’s 21-year-old wonderkid of a winger at the centre of a tug of war between England and Wales, continued to sprinkle his stardust around the pitch with another strong performance to add another layer of intrigue over where he will pledge his international allegiances.

The Cardiff-born speedster scored the pick of four first-half tries for the hosts when Burger Odendaal spilled the ball as the visitors were trying to clear their lines. Henry Slade pounced on the handling error and astutely slipped the ball out the back to Harvey Skinner, before the fly-half fizzed a peach of a bounce pass out to a waiting Feyi-Waboso. The medicine undergraduate needed no second invitation to acrobatically finish in the corner.

Incredibly, it took Saints’ 25 minutes to make their first entry into Chiefs’ 22 after the hosts had blitzed them with a quartet of scores. Up until that point, the league leaders had looked like a flock of lost sheep, but they flicked a switch after mounting their first real attack.

Jenkins, Exeter’s captain, was sent to the bin after barging high into George Furbank as the Saints’ fullback spun his way through Exeter’s defence like a time-travelling tardis, and with the extra man the visitors struck through Callum Braley before reducing the deficit moments later through Sleightholme.

With the Six Nations around the corner, Alex Mitchell staked a big claim to be England’s starting scrum-half after injecting a fresh energy into Saints off the bench, sniping through a gap to set up Sleightholme for his second. The visitors’ power game was aided by the efforts of Tom Pearson and Tommy Freeman, although they took the lead for the first time on the hour mark, Chiefs kept snapping at their heels.

As the game became more fragmented, the hosts had a score disallowed when Ross Vintcent raced through to dot down after Tommy Wyatt had been illegally pulled out of a ruck by Hutchinson, which sparked an off-the-ball scuffle. Baxter was reluctant to criticise Anthony Woodthorpe’s decision to reward his side a penalty - which Slade nudged over - instead describing the call as “odd.”

Chiefs’ director of rugby, however, was pleased with his young side’s overall performance, which he joked Steve Borthwick had jinxed after name checking a number of his high-flying players in the week - including Feyi-Waboso, Slade and Roots - who could be in contention for a call-up to his Six Nations squad.

“Once someone starts talking nicely about you, stuff like this happens,” said Baxter, with a wry smile. “I was sitting there this week, people are starting to say nice things about us and this is the recipe for disaster. But it is great. The players showed a lot of spirit today - they got things wrong, they got things right - and that’s what games of rugby are like.”

Match details

Scores: 5-0 Vermeulen try, 7-0 Slade con, 12-0 Feyi-Waboso try, 17-0 Townsend try, 19-0 Slade con, 24-0 Vermeulen try, 26-0 Slade con, 26-5 Braley try, 26-7 Smith con, 26-12 Sleightholme try, 26-14 Smith con, 26-19 Furbank try, 26-21 Smith con, 26-26 Sleightholme try, 26-28 Smith con, 29-28 Slade pen, 29-33 Sleightholme try, 29-35 Smith con, 34-35 Tuima try, 36-35 Slade con, 36-40 Hutchinson try, 36-42 Smith con.

Exeter Chiefs: T Wyatt; I Feyi-Waboso, H Slade, J Hawkins (O Devoto 58), B Hammersley (Z Wimbush 58); H Skinner, S Townsend (T Cairns 56); N Abuladze (A Hepburn 49), J Yeandle (M Norey 49), J Iosefa-Scott (E Painter 49), L Pearson, D Jenkins (R Tuima 50), E Roots, J Vermeulen (R Vintcent 58), G Fisilau.

Yellow carded: Jenkins, Slade.

Northampton Saints: G Furbank; O Sleightholme, B Odendaal (F Dingwall 45), R Hutchinson, T Litchfield (T Freeman 50); F Smith, C Braley (A Mitchell 50); T Haffar (E Iyogun 50), S Matavesi (C Langdon 50), T Davison (E Millar Mills 57), A Moon, C Munga (T Mayanavanua 75), A Coles, A Scott-Young (T Pearson 57), S Graham.

Referee: Anthony Woodthorpe

Attendance: 14,091