Innard at the double for Chiefs
By Nigel Walrond
2/4/18
It was hard to wipe the smile off the face of Exeter Chiefs hooker Jack Innard after his two tries helped them lift the Anglo-Welsh Cup with a superb 28-11 victory over Westcountry rivals Bath at Kingsholm.
The 22-year-old has missed most of this season after undergoing surgery on a dislocated shoulder.
But he returned to action in the final pool game against Saracens in February, and with injuries to Luke Cowan-Dickie and Elvis Taione, and with Shaun Malton having only just returned from his own injury problems, he got the nod to start against Bath and bagged his first tries of the campaign.
“It is an incredible feeling to come through a game like that and be crowned Anglo-Welsh Cup winners and the boys are buzzing and we are going to have a good night,” said the Truro-born forward soon after receiving his winners’ medal.
“It is nice to be back playing again. It has been a long season for me not playing, and to win this is a great feeling.”
Innard scored a try on his Chiefs debut in the Anglo-Welsh Cup against Cardiff Blues in November 2016, and tripled his tally with his double against Bath.
“I didn’t have to do much work,” he said modestly. “To be fair the boys did the hard work up front and I just finished it off, but it is always nice to get over the line. I scored on my debut last year and they are always special.”
The first, after only five minutes, was a clever pre-planned move from a close-range line-out, which worked a treat, with Matt Kvesic claiming the throw-in and passing the ball down to skipper Kai Horstmann, who ran back to the front of the line to link with Innard and send him over in the corner.
“We had planned that at the beginning of the week and it is nice when those little moves actually pay off.
“The boys started the Premiership game against Bath fast the week before and we talked about that prior to the game, and we did that really well, we went after Bath, we put a lot of pressure on them and built that lead, which eventually got us the win.”
One crucial moment in the game came in the run-up to half-time, when Bath were camped on the Exeter line and won a couple of scrum penalties, but the Chiefs held out and reached the interval still boasting a 17-point lead.
“Fair play to Bath, they are obviously a quality side, and they came back at us, and the boys dug deep when we were on our line, and we did really well to come away from there without conceding, and that kind of spurred us on into the second half.
“That was really crucial not to concede any points there.”
The Exeter scrum appeared to get stronger as the game went on, to the point where they were dominant in the closing stages, and Innard explained: "That was an area we were targeting, and I thought we scrummaged really well in the second half. I thought the scrum was a big momentum changer in the game because we were able to exit it and get penalties off it, and take the pressure off us, which helped us a lot."