Baxter hands England final say on Feyi-Waboso return with South Africa tour looming

Exeter head coach Rob Baxter has confirmed that England, not the club, will determine when Immanuel Feyi-Waboso returns from jaw surgery, with the 23-year-old winger facing a tight race to be fit for England’s summer tour opener against South Africa in Johannesburg on July 4.

Feyi-Waboso underwent an operation on his jaw last week after sustaining the injury during Exeter’s Premiership win over Leicester on May 31. He will miss the Chiefs’ Gallagher Premiership play-off semi-final at Bath on June 13, and his availability for England’s subsequent Tests against Fiji on July 11 and Argentina on July 18 remains uncertain.

“Manny will not be rushed back into any match situation,” Baxter said. “He is on an enhanced contract so England will make the final decision. It is an assessment almost on a weekly basis. Right here and now, he is not available this weekend.”

Baxter outlined a cautious, surgeon-led process for determining the winger’s readiness. “I imagine what we will look at is if there is an assessment we can do at the start of next week to see where he is,” he said. “If a surgeon looks at his jaw and thinks everything is fine and everything is settled… could it be stable after two weeks, or three weeks, or four? There is a process, and that will get agreed with the surgeon who has done the operation. It won’t come down to me saying ‘No, I want Manny this weekend’. He will either be made available or he won’t.”

The injury adds to a frustrating run of misfortune for Feyi-Waboso, who missed the entirety of England’s Guinness Six Nations campaign with a hamstring problem. The jaw issue emerged in an unlikely fashion — he initially believed he had simply loosened a tooth during the Leicester match, only for an X-ray to reveal the more serious damage.

“He knew he had picked up a bang in the game, but I think he thought he loosened a tooth at the time,” Baxter explained. “It was only when he had an X-ray to assess his tooth that this came out.”

Baxter was keen to contextualise the incident, stressing there was no technical error involved. “He is a physical player, the way he plays, and when you run quick you are going to run into things hard. It was not a big tackle, or something he got technically wrong, but just a rugby thing, where hard parts of different bodies hit and something breaks. It is just unfortunate for Manny because he was having such a big end to the season.”