An emotional Danny Care said goodbye to The Stoop as Harlequins celebrated his departure with a hard-fought 24-22 victory over a stubborn Exeter.
Care, 38, was introduced as a 64th-minute replacement when his side trailed by one point but a late penalty from Marcus Smith ensured a fairytale ending for the scrum-half who took his tally to a club-record 394 games.
Cadan Murley, Will Porter and Marcus Smith scored Harlequins’ tries with Smith converting all three and adding a penalty.
Tommy Wyatt, Rus Tuima and Stu Townsend scored Exeter’s tries with Henry Slade adding two conversions and a penalty.
Care said: “I came here as a 19 year old so I’m incredibly blessed with what I’ve achieved.
“I owe this club so much as they’ve stuck by me through thick and thin with the crowd singing my name loudly which is far more than I deserve.
“I haven’t cried in years but I’ve cried about 20 times this week.”
Harlequins’ head coach Danny Wilson said: “Danny has had a phenomenal career with close to 400 games. He is a top bloke and a true Quins’ legend and I don’t think his feats will be repeated again.
“It’s been an emotional week for him as injuries have prevented him from training to the intensity he wants so he’s getting out at the right time.
“However today our performance wasn’t clinical enough as we didn’t get the fluidity we had last week.
“They were very physical and frustrated us at the breakdown with handling errors stopping us from getting away from them.
“We are disappointed not to get the bonus-point but our play-off chances were already pretty slim so winning was the priority as the game was in the balance.”
Exeter fell to their 13th defeat in 17 Premiership matches but this was a much-improved performance as for large parts of the game they threatened to spoil Care’s party and ultimately prevented the home side from securing a bonus point.
Cheifs director of rugby Rob Baxter said: “Today we had the emotion and togetherness to stay in the fight with our discipline much improved.
“In a normal season, it was kind of a par result by competing throughout and coming away from home with a losing bonus point.
“However ironically how much better could we be if we could routinely catch and pass for at one stage we didn’t see the ball for 15-20 minutes.
“There may be a few decisions that went against us but I don’t want to dwell on it as good sides don’t worry about that.
“It was a very difficult and human situation with the departure of Rob (Hunter) and Ali (Hepher), who had both been with us a long time but Dave Walder officially started yesterday as attack coach and he is enthusiastic about the job in hand.”
