Chiefs hit the reset button - Baxter
By Mark Stevens
11/8/21
Rob Baxter says his Exeter Chiefs squad will use the disappointment of last season’s Gallagher Premiership final defeat as a ‘key driver’ to take steps forward.
For a sixth successive season, the Chiefs found themselves back at Twickenham challenging for English Rugby’s top prize. But, unlike the previous campaign, the Devonians were unable to make it back-to-back titles, slipping to a narrow 40-38 defeat.
It was a bitter pill to swallow for Baxter and his players, who had again performed admirably during a season which, once again, had been played out largely behind the ongoing issues surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.
Baxter, though, has used the off-season to good effect and, following a frank and honest first meeting with his players on their first day back for pre-season, he is confident lessons will be learnt in the wake of June’s final setback.
“Coming back in, it was good to sit down and have that reset meeting after last season,” said Baxter. “Initial thoughts are that has gone down well, the players have bought into what we have asked of them, and now it looks like they are ready to come in, work hard and get themselves ready for the new season.
“Already we’ve done some fitness testing – the scores of which we we’re really pleased with – and now it feels like there is a good feeling amongst the group, not that kind of bubbly, silly feeling when guys get together for the first time in a while. When they are in that kind of frame of mind, it’s always a good indicator of where will be at the start of the season because it feels like we are ready to get some real work done – and maybe use last season’s disappointment as a key driver to take some steps forward.”
As he indicated, though, Baxter and his team of coaches have been closely assessing last season’s campaign, looking to pick out key areas of positivity, but also those areas of concern.
“In was a frustrating end to the season, of course it was,” added Baxter. “You win and you lose games – and I said after the final, that was final was about the winners and that was Harlequins and I still firmly believe that. However, that doesn’t stop the frustrations of how we finished the season.
“You don’t need to be a rugby genius or be able to read games inside out to see our results – other than Bristol away, where you could say we had a bit of a point to prove that day – if you look at those results, where we 18-0 down away to Northampton, going even worse down against Sale Sharks here the following week, and only deciding to come back when the home semi-final was slipping away when we got the red card, all of those contributed to a lower of our standards and a thought process of ‘it will be alright in the end’.
“Actually, what happened in the final was we ran out of time. You can’t decide you will do a bit when you are behind and then ease off when you get in front, especially against a side like Quins, who were going to throw everything at us. They took the lead at the right time – and although we hit back almost immediately – we just ran out of time.
“For me, that was the frustrating part of last season. I think as a group – for whatever reasons – we didn’t read the warning signs, but sometimes you need that loss to really highlight the warning signs were there. We didn’t have a killer instinct; we didn’t really put teams away and we kind of did enough.
“Doing enough, though, over those final few weeks of the season kind of cost us the biggest game of all. That was the frustration for me but, at the same time, I am one of those people who knows you have to go through these things to really appreciate them. We have had some success for a number of seasons, especially with the season before.
“Backing up being double champions and backing it up in the right way was always going to be tough. However, we nearly did it!
“We very nearly backed up winning with another trophy and we came as close as we possibly could have come. But, we didn’t come just quite close enough to win it and that should be a frustration and an annoyance for us.”