Chiefs to face the Bulls
By Mark Stevens
16/12/22
Exeter’s coaches have challenged their Chiefs team to ‘make memories’ and they certainly did that with their statement 27-12 win over Castres in last weekend’s opening fixture of this season’s Heineken Champions Cup.
Tomorrow, Director of Rugby Rob Baxter will be calling for more of the same from his players as they prepare to welcome South Africans visitors, the Bulls, to Sandy Park for the first time (1pm).
Like the Chiefs, the Bulls also began with a bang, marking their tournament debut with a 42-36 success over Lyon in the heat of Pretoria.
Fast forward a week and Jake White’s visitors have touched down in Devon to temperatures of below zero and wary of the threat of a Chiefs outfit, who won Europe’s top prize just two years ago.
That success remains the club’s biggest memory to date, but Baxter is hopeful that further reward can be claimed this season - and has challenged his players to use last weekend’s result as the springboard for another powerful display tomorrow.
“All of last week we looked at past memories of trips to Europe, montages of games and hearing from past players talking about their experiences,” explained Baxter. “The theme throughout was that Europe offers that massive opportunity to make great memories.
“As a group, it will be something you can always look back on and talk about in years to come. Winning last week was one of those memories and it was great that we stayed the extra night and that the lads could go out, let their hair down and build some memories together.
“In a way, I think it helped bring the best out of us. It was a great night in Europe, a great win and, hopefully, it had provided the foundation for us to kick-start what we can achieve again this weekend.”
First half tries from Sam Simmonds and Dave Ewers set the tone for the Chiefs, who added further scores from Sam Maunder and Olly Woodburn after the break to ensure they headed home with maximum reward from the Stade Pierre Fabre.
With the scores deadlocked at 12-12 at the break, Baxter explained how a number of the players set the tone during the interval to inspire a powerful second half showing from the Premiership club.
“Most of the chat at the break was from the players themselves,” said Baxter. “By the time the coaches got into the changing room, the likes of Henry Slade and Sam Simmonds were talking and spelling out what we needed. It was almost like they knew the game was there for the taking, but it was down to them to go out and push through the messages.
“You saw almost from the start of the second half we started to get some dominance. Then, Castres came back into it with a period of pressure, particularly that time when they had two or three scrums close to our line, but we battled through and that was kind of the defining moment because from there we never looked in any real danger.”
The Castres threat a week ago was certainly sizeable and the Chiefs can expect more of the same this weekend from the Bulls.
“There are similar challenges again this week in terms of physicality and around the set-piece,” warned Baxter. “That said, we’ve tried to focus more on ourselves, rather than too much about them. What was good last week was that we had a real alignment in everything we did. That’s not necessarily been there all the time over the last 18 months or so, but we saw it last week and it shows that when we have it, we’re a very powerful team.
“This week, the focus has been a lot on just rediscovering that alignment again and getting ourselves ready for the weekend. If we do that and we get it right, then we give ourselves a great chance of getting something from the game.”
Team news for the Chiefs sees Baxter make just one change to his starting line-up with England and British Lions hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie recalled after injury to start at hooker and also captain the side. He takes the place of Jack Yeandle, who drops to the replacements bench.
