Chiefs set for European title defence
By Mark Stevens
9/12/20
EPCR European Player of the Year Sam Simmonds has warned any club with pretensions of dethroning his Exeter Chiefs side as Heineken Champions Cup title–holders that the English club will be as strong as they were last season.
They won eight of their nine matches en route to their maiden European crown and have made a great start to the defence of their Gallagher Premiership title as they prepare to welcome Glasgow Warriors to Sandy Park in their 2020/21 Heineken Champions Cup opener on Sunday.
“With the quick turnaround and the year that it’s been, we’ve had to flick the switch straight into Premiership and then, obviously, two [Heineken Champions Cup] games coming up,” said the 26-year-old England international.
“It’s quite nice to not have too long to get back into playing the games. We could have just been happy with what happened last season, but I think we’ve shown that we’re really looking forward to the challenge of this year and trying to do it again.
“Last year was great, but it is tougher to back it up. We don’t want to be the team that’s happy with competing and winning things for one year. We want to go back-to-back. We want to be putting our hands up again and kind of relish that feeling that we were the dominant team last year.
“Not much has changed in our squad, not many new players have come in and we haven’t lost any boys, so we’ll be as strong as we were last year.”
Last season’s leading Heineken Champions Cup try-scorer is relishing the new format of fewer matches, beginning with home and away ties against Glasgow and Toulouse.
“It’s less games, but they come at you thick and fast, and we’re kind of used to playing Glasgow now and obviously we played Toulouse in the semi-final only about three months ago, so it wasn’t long since we played them last,” said Simmonds, who scored eight tries in eight games last season.
“But we’re quite looking forward to the challenge. Two home games and two away games is not much, so you kind of have to win away from home, which is tough for any team in Europe, but we’re looking forward to that challenge.”
As the back-row forward said, Glasgow are familiar foes for Exeter, having played them six times in the pool stages since 2013/14, including last season, when the Chiefs triumphed 34-18 at home and drew 31-31 at Scotstoun Stadium.
“They’ll have a lot of their international boys back, who’ll have been playing a lot in the Autumn Nations Cup, which will bring a lot of experience,” he remarked.
“They’re a team that likes to play, likes to run the ball from anywhere, so they have caused us problems like that in the past, but we need to focus on ourselves and obviously that showed last year. If we do just focus on how we play, teams can’t really stick with us.”
