Last-gasp Fisilau try spares Exeter’s blushes against lowly Newcastle | Premiership

Imagine the heightened interest in this fixture had the outcome properly mattered. The Premiership’s bottom two sides scrapping for survival, the losers set to face an end-of-season playoff against the ambitious champions of the Championship? Let’s just say the flat atmosphere around the stadium would have been instantly enhanced.

The attendance of under 10,000 would also have been boosted, the pre-game media build-up seriously intense. Instead, with only bruised pride at stake, the lack of real jeopardy was impossible to ignore. Unless, that is, you are responsible for unearthing fresh investment to keep Newcastle Falcons in business, in which case the loudly ticking clock currently drowns out all else.

Everyone with an ounce of rugby soul wants the Falcons to keep on flying the north east flag as high as possible. So do the rest of the Premiership clubs for whom the optics of a nine-team league would not look great. Ten sides is already skinny enough when it comes to generating sufficient games and storylines to attract mass interest and promote the sense of a healthy domestic game.

It was in everyone’s interests, then, for both these clubs to put on a bit of a show to paper over the promotional cracks and underline that good rugby will ultimately sell itself. So much for that crowd-pleasing vision. The second-half did not yield a single point until the 79th minute when Greg Fisilau finally broke clear to score in the left corner and save Exeter’s increasing blushes.

Those keen to argue that quality and accuracy invariably improve in the absence of relegation might want to avoid the full re-run of this particular encounter. The first-half was certainly not much to write home about from the Chiefs perspective. They started brightly enough, with Will Rigg going over in the corner to open the scoring after just seven minutes and Henry Slade’s lovely angled conversion adding some extra gloss.

Slowly but surely, though, Newcastle clawed their way back into the contest, helped initially when scrum-half Joe Davis, making his first start, intercepted a delayed pass from Ben Coen and scored unopposed. And just before the half hour the visitors pulled ahead, the strong centre Max Clark surging past Josh Hodge’s tackle to put Newcastle 12-7 in front. Steve Diamond, Newcastle’s director of rugby, makes no apologies for his side’s ‘simple’ gameplan but what the Falcons do not need right now are unnecessary frills.

Exeter duly took the hint and tightened things up themselves, having scored just seven points from their first nine visits to their opponents’ 22. The sin-binning of Richard Palframan at a line-out also offered them a numerical advantage and it was not a huge surprise when the busy Martin Moloney was driven over to level up the scores again.

A Brett Connon penalty did put Newcastle narrowly ahead at the interval but the stiff breeze was now at the Chiefs’ backs. In days gone by – and Exeter were crowned European Champions less than five years ago – the rest would have been a foregone conclusion. That kind of certainty, however, has been glimpsed only fleetingly this season.

Sure enough, the Falcons still had their beaks in front entering the final quarter, with Chiefs looking less and less sure of themselves. Coen, England’s U20 fly-half, was twice unable to find touch from penalties and Newcastle, sensing possibilities, defended with increasing resolve. They almost hung on right to the end, only for Fisilau to land his belated killer punch.