Immanuel Feyi-Waboso has ‘natural ingredients’ to become ‘world-class winger’ – Austin Healey on Exeter win – Eurosport

Feyi-Waboso dotted down the visitors’ bonus-point try at Kingsholm as Rob Baxter’s side recorded a 38-17 victory to bounce back from two disappointing defeats in recent outings at Toulouse and Bath.

The 21-year-old, who featured in England’s Six Nations squad earlier this year, has scored seven times this term to sit joint-fifth in the individual charts. Northampton’s Ollie Sleightholme, Feyi-Waboso’s compatriot, leads the way with 11.

Although he did not win the Gallagher Player of the Match award in Chiefs’ morale-bolstering win on Sunday – two-try hero Jacques Vermeulen took that honour – Feyi-Waboso’s all-action display was enough to leave TNT Sports expert Healey waxing lyrical about the youngster.

“If you look at how he played and how he sits behind the ball, he was in behind the ruck and the 10, and that’s what I like about him,” Healey explained.

“A lot of wingers, particularly young guys, will get on the right wing, stay there and maybe wait for the ball. But he goes hunting for it, and he’s so good in those close areas. He can take on forwards, tight five [front and second row of the scrum] guys. He’s got a low centre of gravity.

“Defensively he’s getting better, he’s reading plays very well. He’s so young, and he’s got a lot to learn on the wing, but he’s got the natural ingredients that can turn him into a world-class winger, one of the best that we’ve produced in a long, long time.”

Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter gave an unusual pre-match interview to TNT Sports, indicating that victory at Kingsholm in arguably a must-win game was not as important as the “simple details” and “learned lessons” that he would rather his young squad focused on.

However, it seemed to be the perfect ploy to ease the pressure on his players, who delivered an excellent performance against a Gloucester side who haven’t been able to get going in the league this campaign.

This season, Exeter have reached a European quarter-final, losing out to a highly-experienced Toulouse side, and are still in with an outside chance of crashing the play-off places in the Premiership.

After a big turnover in playing personnel in recent years, the Devon outfit are in a transition period and still exceeding expectations in most people’s eyes.

Baxter was keen to emphasise his desire for his players to keep improving, rather than striving too hard and too early for what could be perceived to be unrealistic goals.

“From day one of pre-season, the message was ‘we need to be better by the end of this week in pre-season’,” Baxter told TNT Sports.

“We’ve driven that message every single week, whether we’ve been in European quarter-finals or a top-four Premiership game. We pushed it again this week, but we pushed it a little bit harder. We need to stop getting driven off course. We need to be the ones setting our stall out and making teams react to us and against Bath [a 26-14 defeat on April 20], fair play, they knocked us off course and we reacted to them.

“We do have to learn lessons, but today it feels like we learned one quite quickly. That’s down to the players and their attitudes and they’ve done extremely well. I hope now that they can go and have a good, old traditional bus. We haven’t got a game next week and they can really enjoy this and have a few beers and celebrate.”

Looking to next season, Baxter was open about his side’s plans, admitting that while Chiefs were in a healthier position financially, they would struggle to compete with some of the bigger-spending clubs.

“Cap isn’t going to be an issue for us,” Baxter said. “Budget is going to be the challenge.

“We know where we are. The one thing that is looking very bright for us is that we are getting back on the front foot financially. That’s what it feels like. That would allow us to do what we did when we first came into the Premiership, when we weren’t at cap, but we grew the players we had. We brought players in, and pushed through and got to the stage we wanted to be at, and we stayed at that block for seven, eight, nine years.

“We’re going to try and get back there and we’re going to have to develop together. The finances are going to have to develop along with the team.”