Exeter’s history boys target Europe after conquering England
Masters of the Aviva Premiership, Lords of Devon, darlings of the neutral masses, the Exeter Chiefs team bus led a tumultuous army back west on Saturday night bonded as one, with their Lions wing Jack Nowell determined to enjoy the night before climbing into his prebooked 7am taxi to London and onward to New Zealand.
Unlike last year’s losing performance against Saracens, there was no indulgence in just getting to the final. And even then the deed was not done until all air from lungs had been expelled on a furnace-like Twickenham afternoon, with the game not settled until the last two minutes of extra time. It was a suitably dramatic and drawn-out finale to a riveting season.
It is only right in saluting the Chiefs’ achievement to acknowledge that the spoils could easily have gone to Wasps, who stung their opponents with two tries against the run of play either side of half-time from Jimmy Gopperth and Elliot Daly, but they did not.
The scoreboard is the only reliable reckoner in sport and the name of a new champion was etched in all its suitable glory.
So much has been said about the collective strength of the Chiefs, a team of stars without any egodriven baggage, one-for-all musketeers. And yet such has been the influence of Rob Baxter on what has evolved at Exeter down the years – the local boy who became a man on the field, the player turned captain turned head coach – that it would be remiss to assess what has happened without putting his name up in lights.
It says much about him that Baxter’s initial thoughts were on returning to the 300-acre family farm at Cowley Bridge for “cider and pasties”, an ironic self-deprecating reference to the way in which the club are often portrayed. There is an element of truth to the virtues of home-grown earthy values but it misses the real point.
Baxter’s team, shaped in his image, are as sharp and shrewd as the most hi-tech sporting outfits in the land, brilliantly prepared, astute and intelligent in all that they do. It has shown in their play across the season. It was there to witness on Saturday, too, from the moment they arrived at the stadium.
“There was a completely different feeling in the build-up to this game to how it was a year ago,” recounted former Lions and England lock Geoff Parling, who signs off from a prodigious shift in English rugby with this victory, another example of a good bit of business done by Baxter in the transfer market.
“When we got off the bus, we were focused. A year ago, I think the lads were a bit like ‘look at the support’ and were gobsmacked.
“Saturday was all about focus and the job at hand. I always felt we were going to win. It’s probably different [from winning the title with Leicester]. When I joined Leicester, it was expected.”
As will now be the case with the
Chiefs. They are no longer the surprise package, the fairy-tale team who won promotion from the Championship seven years ago and have been on an incremental rise ever since. There are no laurels on which to rest in the Baxter household much as he was intent on savouring the moment if for no other reason than it would be gone in the blink of an eye.
“You can only celebrate the Premiership title as it happens because someone will soon come along and slap you,” said Baxter. “As great as today is, it can’t be the defining thing about Exeter. If there is now a downward spiral, I’ll have failed in my job. We have to arrive at preseason wanting to be stronger next season, to be a better side from day one. We have let ourselves down in Europe for the last couple of seasons and that has to be a marker for us.”
It was a mid-season thumping by Clermont Auvergne that triggered the response that led to Saturday’s triumph, highlighting deficiencies within the Chiefs psyche, a sense of entitlement.
That is why they were able to trump the Wasps fightback – if only just with one of the originals, flyhalf Gareth Steenson, banging over the crucial penalty kicks just before the end of normal time and then again in extra time when the putupon Wasps scrum caved in.
Enormous credit should go to the Wasps director of rugby, Dai Young, who, in theory, might have called for uncontested scrums once his various props got injured during the game.
“That would be bending the rule and I’d rather lose than do that,” said Young. That is a sentence that ought to win an award in its own right.
Wasps were too rushed and too careless in the first half and the Chiefs took full advantage with a wonderfully-executed try from Nowell and one from full-back Phil Dollman following a lovely off-load by Ollie Devoto.
Wasps rallied, Chiefs dragged themselves back off the ropes and Steenson delivered the knockout blow. Cue bedlam.
“I’ll be sore on Sunday but it will be a complete switch of mentality to the Lions, which is the dream of every rugby player, and I can’t be thinking too much about what happened at Twickenham with Exeter,” said Nowell.
“But I’m going to enjoy this first. Times like this don’t come around too often so it’s important to make the most of it.”
Quite right.