We could start at the end, with everyone on their feet at Sandy Park and cheering one of this season’s most stirring European moments. Rewatch the footage and even Tom Wyatt, Exeter’s elusive young full-back, could be seen gleefully thumping the turf three times with his right fist last Sunday, in celebration of the thrilling 56th-minute try that helped Exeter secure a home Champions Cup quarter-final against the Stormers this Saturday.
Or we can retrace our steps and reflect on the improbable Cinderella-style journey that has taken him from there to here. In the hills and narrow lanes of west Somerset they love their sporting pursuits but the road to national prominence can be more isolated and winding than it is in metropolitan areas. The 23‑year‑old Wyatt, a farmer’s son from just outside Wiveliscombe – or “Wivey” as it is known to the locals – has had to go the long way round even to come this far.
Dig a little deeper and the tale of Wyatt is also another cautionary example of English rugby’s dislocated teenage development pathways. Only four years ago he was playing at level eight with North Petherton. No invitation to join a Premiership club’s junior academy had materialised. The one time he attended a trial, aged 16, for Bath’s age-group setup, they sent him packing with the dullest two words in a coach’s lexicon: too small.
Yet now, having impressed in Exeter’s Premiership Cup triumph last month, the unaffected country boy has slalomed his way into the Champions Cup last eight. Not since Harold Gimblett missed the morning bus up from Bicknoller, hitched a hasty lift and scored a hundred in 63 minutes batting at No 8 on his Somerset debut in 1935, has this scenic rural backwater raised a collective pint of cider and toasted a more evocative local story.
Only a timely slice of luck brought him to Exeter’s notice at all. One of his coaches at Taunton School, Nic Sestaret, used to play for the Chiefs and knew Exeter were putting together an “outreach” team of wannabe locals to play against the Royal Navy. Sestaret, also involved at North Petherton, put Wyatt’s name forward and the former schoolboy fly-half was catapulted – “All I can remember is being smashed by a big Fijian” – to the next level.
Something about the way he stuck at it, though, appealed to Rob Baxter, Exeter’s director of rugby, who invited him to senior squad training. Helping Taunton Titans win promotion to National League One in 2020 further boosted morale but then Covid descended. Wyatt continued working locally for a steel fabrication company and, to keep fit, erected a makeshift gym for himself on the family farm: “I built it out in the shed with a few logs, one barbell and some bits of four-by-two.”
Something deep inside, though, encouraged him to keep the faith. “You’ve just got to keep turning up and pulling your boots on,” he says. “If you keep believing in yourself you’ve always got a chance.”
Much as he enjoyed sharing a few beers with his mates back in Wivey, with a bit of village cricket at Winsford on Exmoor thrown in, he signed a dual-registered loan deal with Cornish Pirates, a five-hour round trip from the familiar fields of home.
And so began three seasons of 5am Monday starts in pursuit of a dream so distant he could barely discern it in the pre-dawn darkness. If his weekly odyssey to Penzance was eased by a shrewd secondhand car purchase – “I bought Jonny Hill’s BMW off him when he left for Sale” – there was also ample opportunity to mull over his career choices. “There were times when I was driving down thinking: ‘What am I doing with my life?’”
For the uninitiated, the Championship is no place for anyone seeking financial security. Even now some playing contracts are barely worth £10,000 per year. Shockingly, if serious injury strikes there is no players’ union safety net either. What the league can offer, though, is a precious stepping stone for aspiring young professionals like Wyatt who would otherwise struggle to find regular rugby of the requisite standard. “Physically it’s a tough league and it’s great for preparing you for the next step,” he says. “It got me time in the seat.”
As well as an opportunity to hone the high ball work needed to thrive at full-back, it also opened his eyes to the realities of rugby life away from Twickenham’s corporate lounges. Wyatt is no political agitator but, with Pirates’ loyal benefactor Dicky Evans preparing to cease bankrolling the club, he is convinced the Championship deserves better from English rugby’s powerbrokers. “There needs to be more money from the top,” he says, simply. It’s got to be run as a more well-funded league.”
Because without the Championship – or the encouragement of selfless coaches at clubs such as North Petherton and Taunton Titans – there would be no back-door route for teenage rejects or late developers such as Wyatt, now an alert, versatile 6ft 1in running threat mixing it with some of the world’s best players. The supportive Pirates coaches, Gavin Cattle and Alan Paver, deserve particular credit for assisting the young man’s progression but, in the end, it has mostly been about individual perseverance against considerable odds.
Which is how this particular Cinderella has finally made it to the ball. You will struggle to meet a more instantly friendly young pro, even if he is still not the best‑known Wyatt in Wiveliscombe. The family have farmed locally for over 200 years and last month, remarkably, his grandfather, Wesley, had his first book published at the youthful age of 91. God Speed the Plough covers an eventful 70-year career span in an industry that has altered almost as much as rugby union.
Hopefully Wyatt Jr’s story also still has many more chapters in it. Lining up opposite the top-class Damian Willemse, and starting ahead of Stuart Hogg and Josh Hodge, is noteworthy enough. But if Wyatt has another stormer and Exeter progress to the Champions Cup semi-finals, it will not only be a parochial tale of everyday country folk. Here’s to “Wivey”, North Petherton, the Titans, the Pirates and all the other far-flung hotbeds that, ultimately, keep the fires of English rugby burning.
