Bath v Exeter: Five takeaways as Slade’s day swings from disaster to inspiration while departing Springbok star dismantles scrum in ‘truest send-off’

James While 13 Jun 2026 7:14 PM

Exeter Chiefs did the unthinkable on Saturday, beating reigning champions Bath at the Recreation Ground in the PREM playoff semi-final.

Here are our five takeaways:

The Top Line

Bath led 26-10 and had a foot in the Twickenham final, yet somehow, by the skin of their teeth and Joe Cokanasiga’s fingertips, Exeter Chiefs left the Recreation Ground with a 26-27 win, a date with Northampton and one of the great semi-final comebacks behind them. Four tries each, the game settled by the boot and a litany of late blunders from the hosts.

For an hour, the Finn Russell question looked answered. Johann van Graan shared the playmaking out rather than handing it to one man: Ben Spencer ran the territory with a superb kicking game, Max Ojomoh distributed like a second playmaker, and Santiago Carreras was freed to play a narrow role. Bath built a sixteen-point lead off 66 per cent first-half possession, managing rather than sparkling, the class around Carreras carrying him.

Chaos is where a controller earns his money, and the closing quarter was all chaos. Carreras had already waved Christ Tshiunza through for the try that kept Exeter alive, the ten channel where Russell would stand left open. Then came the numbers that damn Bath: 61 per cent of the territory, no penalty goal, no drop goal, no final. All that field position and no kicking game to convert it, and Bath were missing the man who turns pressure into points.

The verdict was sealed on the Exeter line, where Bath camped phase after phase at the death with a drop goal worth three and a final on offer, and never took it. Carreras never imposed himself on the moment. It was the kind of drop Russell slots in his sleep. They covered his playmaking through the calm and could not replace his command in the storm, and it cost them a final they led by sixteen.

Bath won the first half, but the Exe bench won the second

This was a tale of two halves told through the possession column. Bath had 66 per cent of the ball before the break and used it to bully Exeter at the collision, short, hard lines and ferocious clear-outs that gave the Chiefs no quick ball. Thomas du Toit and Beno Obano trolleyed the Exeter scrum, Bath carried 89 times to 64, and Exeter were reduced to a remarkable 192 tackles. For forty minutes, the Chiefs were a defensive unit and little else.

Then the big men tired in the sun, and a system built on that much output always carried an expiry date. Second-half possession flipped to Exeter at 59 per cent, Baxter’s bench changed the picture, and the comeback flowed. Exeter matched Bath’s four tries, every one after the break built on the foothold their fresh legs won.

They led every column at half time and still lost. The side that managed its tank better across eighty minutes in the heat is the side going to Twickenham, and it was not the one that started the brighter.

Slade’s rollercoaster

Henry Slade arrived as the league’s leading scorer and Exeter’s controller, and his afternoon ran through every emotion the game owns. The first half was a horror show. He threw a forward pass off the top that killed a certain early try, then slapped the ball from Spencer’s hands at a ruck on his own line for a needless yellow, his head in his hands before the referee’s arm was up. Bath went to the corner, Obano powered over while Slade walked to the bin, and his missed tackle then sent Tshiunza clear.

The second half saw a different man. The break that made Hammersley’s try was pure class, the delayed pass that sprung it the hardest skill a playmaker owns, holding the ball half a beat to freeze the last defender. It was the precise opposite of the rushed work that got him binned. He was not perfect; the missed conversion off Burger’s try left the door ajar at 26-27, and Skinner took the Player of the Match award that, on a cleaner day, was Slade’s.

Exeter left four points on the tee and won by one anyway, so the rollercoaster ends in the right place. The talisman gave it away in the first half and helped give it back in the second. A day that swung between disaster and inspiration finishes with a Twickenham ticket.

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Bath’s departing heartbeat

Bath lost two of the men who made them the side of their era this summer, and both wrote themselves into the afternoon before the ache set in. Alfie Barbeary, off to Saracens, was the game’s most destructive carrier, 21 carries, 13 defenders beaten and 80 metres, the bleached crop unmistakable on a frame built for collisions. Thomas du Toit, home to the Sharks, produced the image a departing prop dreams of, a forward’s hymn off Barbeary’s carry and Charlie Ewels’s clear out, du Toit hauling three men over for his 21st Premiership try, a record for a prop.

The scrum was the truest send-off. Du Toit dismantled Scott Sio, himself playing his last game for the Chiefs before a move to Cardiff, splitting a hugely capped Wallaby out to irrelevance. It was square, legal and technical, the cleanest way to humble an international. Sio undone by the best scrummager in the game on the wrong day.

The cruelty is that the heartbeat had a heart rate. The big men who built the lead were the men who emptied in the sun as it slipped, and du Toit left the Rec for the final time on the wrong side of the result. A record-breaking try, a scrum masterclass, a losing afternoon. For a Springbok heading home with the 2027 World Cup on the horizon, it is a send-off carrying both glory and ache.

Exeter never lose these

Exeter Chiefs and the play-off semi-final have a long and happy history, and they added to it in dramatic fashion. From 26-10 down they hauled themselves level at four tries apiece, edged in front through the boot, then held their line through forty phases at the death, Joe Cokanasiga held up over the whitewash as the Chiefs refused to break. Hammersley and Greg Fisilau scored, Paul Brown-Bampoe made Fisilau’s try with a brilliant chase and catch, and Ethan Burger went over for the lead, with Skinner taking the Player of the Match award.

The replacement front row was the engine of it. Burger was huge from the moment he arrived, carrying hard and fronting up at the set piece, the cameo that turned the contest. Dweba gave them ballast and bite at hooker, and Bachuki Tchumbadze turned the screw at tighthead until the Bath scrum that had been so dominant before the break began to creak and concede. Where du Toit and Obano had bullied the Chiefs early, the fresh trio bullied back, winning the penalties and the gain-line that swung the momentum and never gave it back. Baxter has built front-row depth that can lose the battle for an hour and win the war.

The Ridley call demands scrutiny, and a balanced one. The referee read it as Cokanasiga running the risk, accepting a deliberate knock-on by reaching for the ball and failing to hold it. From the middle that is defensible, but the law turns on the absence of a realistic chance to catch, and Cokanasiga appeared to have one. His intent was to intercept rather than knock on, and a defender who contests a fair chance should not be punished as though he batted it down cynically. Ridley made a defensible call but arguably the wrong one on the balance the law requires, at the cruellest moment of a semi-final.

The honest view is that the call shaped the finish without fully authoring it. Exeter earned their way back through their bench, and their refusal to break, and Bath’s failure to take the drop goal left their fate in their own hands. The Chiefs go to Twickenham to face Northampton with a young core that has just proved the recovery is real.

Bath