Rob Baxter assesses Tommy Wyatt after two years of injury hell

Exeter Chiefs boss Rob Baxter admits he was delighted to see full-back Tommy Wyatt put almost two years of injury hell behind him and is now ready to accelerate his progress ahead of the new season.

Wyatt played 40 minutes of a pre-season game against the Scarlets last weekend, his first game in over a year after suffering a second serious knee ligament injury.

Baxter says that, as expected for someone who has been out of action for such a long period, Wyatt made some errors as he shook off the rust.

The race is now on to get him fully up to speed ahead of the first game of the Gallagher PREM campaign against Gloucester at Sandy Park at the end of the month.

“Tommy did what Tommy does. He had some really good carries, looked very elusive with the ball. It’s going to take him a little while to regain that touch. He made a few errors on the ball, a couple of little knock-ons and bits and pieces that you wouldn’t really expect.

Fixture

Gallagher Premiership

Exeter Chiefs

07:05

26 Sep 26

Gloucester

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“Well, you wouldn’t expect it when he’s up and running completely, but you maybe would expect it after having been 18 months or two years of injury issues.

“It is great to see him back on the field, great to see he looked like he was moving pretty well. The good thing now is that he’s done that. I actually said to him after, because he came off after 40 minutes without an injury, I said: ‘Now we can start being a bit picky, and we can really try to pull your game apart and get you moving forward quickly.’

“So, that’s the nice thing now. He’s playing, we can review his games properly, and we can look at him like a player, not a rehab guy. That’s going to be great for Tommy now,” he said.