Rugby union: talking points from the weekend’s Premiership action

Exeter are equipped for European success, Bath’s future looks bright despite exit of Sam Burgess and referee Luke Pearce’s steady hand sets the standard He’s pretty new on the scene – and he looks barely old enough to be shaving – but here’s to Luke Pearce, the referee at Franklin’s Gardens. If the match between Northampton and Saracens was far removed from the kind of rugby we became used to at the World Cup, so was Pearce’s handling of a bit of afters compared to the scattergun approach to discipline pursued by the big showpiece’s referees. Technically, according to directives handed down fr…