Baxter keen to rediscover Chiefs mojo
By Rhys Jones
8/9/22
While en route to six consecutive Premiership finals, two league titles and a European trophy, Exeter Chiefs attacked their matches like a well-oiled machine.
Accurate, efficient and nigh on impossible to stop once they set their sights on the try-line. They were a tight-knit squad supercharged by the bonds forged between players and staff off the pitch.
But it is a characteristic that Rob Baxter admits they lost last season and one that he hopes to rediscover as the Chiefs look to bounce back from a disappointing seventh-place finish. “We’ve done a lot more things [this summer] that are very group and fun and relationship-based, which was probably stripped away last season more than any other,” Exeter’s director of rugby tells
Director of Rugby Baxter believes the Covid pandemic, and the lockdowns that ensued, had a big knock-on impact on Exeter’s team-building.
“Obviously, the previous season and a half, it was difficult with Covid, there was just stuff you couldn’t do,” Baxter continues. “We probably let that drag on a bit too long into last season and then we probably didn’t feel like rekindling it as much as we should have done, so we probably missed out on that and that’s something we’re not gonna do again.
“We’ve spent a lot of time this season working hard, but then playing hard together. That’s all part of a process of rebuilding this group.”
That is not the only change Baxter has made for this season. While Ali Hepher has headed the coaching team for some time now, Baxter announced his intention to further relinquish control of match days to Hepher earlier this year.
He has also freshened up his coaching staff, bringing in new defence coach Omar Mouneimne to replace Julian Salvi, who was let go towards the end of last season.
In an unexpected way, that has led to Baxter rekindling a much-needed closeness with his players.
“I was still kind of running match days and talking about the build ups to the games, without really always being able to be at a training session,” he adds.
“After 10 or 11 years of talking to the guys before the game, clearing things up at half time – there is a period where a bit of freshening up is the right thing to do. Just like freshening up the coaching team – bringing in Omar has felt like the right thing to do.
“It has actually, weirdly, meant I’ve spent more time talking to the players rather than less. I can step in with them and I can step away and it feels very comfortable.
“I think that’s the key. I’ve probably had more coffees and more conversations, more of those half hour and hour conversations with players in the last three or four months than I have in the last two years.”
Despite a disappointing campaign,Baxter has flipped it into a cause for positivity. To have finished in the top four would have ultimately made him a happier man in the short term, but finishing seventh has allowed himself and the coaching staff a greater deal of introspection.
Through the wonderful medium of hindsight, Baxter realised that the cracks in Exeter’s success were already starting to appear the previous year.
“Those six points [off fourth-placed Northampton], they’re very easy to see where they could have come from to get us back in the top four. But at the same time, we’ve also got to appreciate that other teams did get in the top four, and we didn’t.
“I think the seeds of us not playing as well as we could have played were already happening, probably towards the end of the previous season. So, we had some stuff we needed to genuinely address and genuinely talk about. Probably finishing seventh, in some ways for us is better than finishing fourth. The most important thing is just to accept we weren’t good enough. And if you can accept we weren’t good enough and don’t try and make too many excuses then that will give you your best chance to move forward.”
As is the case for many teams going through a poor run of form, rarely is it one cause. Baxter calls this “little effects on top of bigger effects”.
Last season was the Chiefs’ worst in terms of unavailability and injuries that Baxter has known. It wasn’t just the injuries to the starting players that hurt Exeter, but a number of second-string and younger players that stretched the squad thin.
One of those little effects that seemed to haunt Exeter the most however, were law changes.
Exeter were a viciously efficient outfit and their simplistic pick-and- go strategy close to the opposition try-line would often result in a steady cycle of attacking possession.
If they were held up over the line, possession would simply be returned via a five-metre scrum. Last season, thanks to a new law, that pressure was thrown away with the defending team handed a goal-line drop out. Baxter believes that it wasn’t the law, so much as its mental effect that disrupted their play.
“I know people talked about the law changes and if that hurt us a bit. I think it did a bit, but I think some of the law changes hurt because it was perceived it was gonna hurt us.
“There’s no doubt I could show numerous examples of us getting stopped or our mauls being held up that weren’t the same the other way round, it was a bit funny. I’ve watched some footage and bits and actually some other teams have talked about it being similar. It doesn’t get officiated quite the same for someone else as it does for you.
“It gets refereed like it affects you when actually, if you watch now, there’s still teams that start picking and going from five metres out. Everyone’s still doing the same stuff, but it seemed to affect us a bit more. Now whether that was on us, mentally. I think we let it affect us a bit more than we should have done.”