Exeter's Tommy Wyatt Facing Long Spell Out With Ankle Injury

Exeter Chiefs have lost Tommy Wyatt for a long spell, with the 26-year-old back likely to be out until December. BBC Sport reports that he injured his ankle and had to leave the field in the first half of the club's European Champions Cup defeat at Toulouse.

Wyatt is one of the backs, the players who run and kick from the outside of the team's forwards. Before the Toulouse match he had played in Exeter's three previous games. He had also been named in the Gallagher Premiership's team of the season so far, a sign of how well he had been playing.

His season had already been a stop-start one. He came back from a serious knee injury over the summer, then damaged his shoulder in the final pre-season game. Now the ankle problem adds to the list.

Exeter's director of rugby, Rob Baxter, said the initial prognosis is that the ankle is not operable, meaning surgery is not an option for it. Baxter said Wyatt should be back either late in the Prem Cup period, the run of domestic cup fixtures, or when Exeter return to Premiership league action.

Wyatt is not the only Exeter player on the sidelines. Winger Campbell Ridl is out for the season, according to BBC Sport. England winger Immanuel Feyi-Waboso has a hamstring issue, the muscle at the back of the thigh that is often a problem for sprinters. Paul Brown-Bampoe and Olly Woodburn are also injured.

That is a lot of absence for one squad to absorb at once. Exeter will need other players to step up in the backs while they wait for their key men to return. Injuries of this kind are part of the game's wear and tear, and how a club copes often depends on the depth of its squad.

For Wyatt, the timetable is the main thing to watch. A return by December would mean a few months of rehabilitation, the careful, step-by-step work that gets an athlete back to full fitness. Whether that timing holds will depend on how the ankle responds to that work.