Double-Header Line-Ups
By Mark Stevens
18/7/17
Rob Baxter has laid down the challenge to his Exeter Chiefs squad to use this weekend’s pre-season double header at Sandy Park as the perfect audition to showcase their talents ahead of the new 2017/18 season.
Running out for the first time since become Aviva Premiership champions at Twickenham in May, Devon’s finest will entertain Championship outfit Cornish Pirates (1:30pm) and Pro 14 visitors, the Dragons (3:30pm), in back-to-back friendlies as they ready themselves to begin their title defence.
Weeks of work in the gym, Exmouth beach and the club’s new Desso training pitch will be put to the test as Baxter readies himself to run the rule over a large nucleus of his first-team squad this weekend.
With the new Premiership campaign set to begin on Friday, September 1 with a testing away day at Gloucester, the Chiefs know they can ill afford to not hit the new season firing on all cylinders.
Baxter has told his players to use these fixtures, as well as next week’s trip to Cardiff Blues, to promote not only their own strengths, but also that of the whole Exeter squad, which has been bolstered by the arrival of six new faces during the close season.
“We’ve picked two sides for the weekend and I know some of the lads will be drawing all kinds of conclusions on how we have selected things,” said Baxter. “However, what I’ve said to the guys is don’t make the mistake of worrying about anything other than your own individual performance and the intensity you bring to the game, because the team we pick for Gloucester will be the 23 players who I believe are the most ready to go out and perform for 80 minutes in a very important Premiership game for us.
“Whether you are playing against the Pirates or the Dragons, the opportunity is right in front of every player to go out and perform this weekend. They can either take that opportunity with two hands - or they can potentially lose it by not putting in a performance.”
And having now welcomed back the final member of his international contingent, Jack Nowell, to full training this week, Baxter says the battle for places within the Chiefs match-day squad will now begin in earnest.
“I think everyone within the squad is looking forward to the weekend,” said the Chiefs’ Director of Rugby. “The way we trained today [Wednesday], which is what I’d call our last main training day of the week, was very good. There was good intensity and good accuracy shown by everyone, but now we need to start playing some games.
“Ali [Hepher] mentioned to me after the session that we can’t keep running against ourselves any more, we need to run things against someone else to see exactly where we are. Right now it all feels pretty good. The vibe in the camp is good, the players look ready to work hard, but we need to get out on the pitch now.”
With a largely unchanged squad reporting back for duty, Baxter insists that he and his coaches have not had to address too much in terms of the overall game plan which, when you think about it, fared pretty well in the grand scheme of last season.
“I suppose the biggest thing we’ve tried to challenge the guys on is a change of intensity during sessions,” continued Baxter. “But that’s more to try and push our game on in a global sense, rather than making any major technical changes.
“Yes, we’ve made one or two technical changes and worked on the odd tactic here and there, but I guess our main focus has been more on building on our strengths and turning them into super strengths because the truth is we won a lot of games last season, particularly when we really concentrated on ourselves and what we do well.”
Keen to pick up from where his side left off, Baxter insists lessons have hopefully been learnt in the wake of last season where the start of the season didn’t go quite to plan for the Chiefs.
“I hope we have have learned some lessons from last year,” he added. “If we’re honest, there wasn’t anything majorly wrong at the start of last season, other than results didn’t quite go our way, but I do go into this season feeling we are performing at an extra level of intensity that perhaps wasn’t there this time last year.
“These games will give us a small indicator of how we are doing, but I don’t think we will really be able to gauge it properly until we play Gloucester. Right now the reality is that everything looks pretty good - the guys have trained well, our scores look good and we’ve got a good number of players fit - but as you say we’re on zero points, which is a little scary at first, but we have to deal with that and mentally push ourselves on.”
Tickets for tomorrow's two fixtures are still available online by clicking here or by purchasing through the Trading Post, which is open from 9:30am to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday
CHIEFS SIDE TO FACE CORNISH PIRATES
15 Lachie Turner
14 Sal M’Boge
13 Tom Hendrickson
12 Harvey Skinner
11 Pete Laverick
10 Joe Simmonds
9 Stuart Townsend (capt)
1 Carl Rimmer
2 Elvis Taione
3 Greg Holmes
4 Toby Salmon
5 Ollie Atkins
6 James Freeman
7 Julian Salvi
8 Matt Kvesic
16 Jack Innard
17 Will Norton
18 Moray Low
19 Wilhelm van der Sluys
20 Ed Holmes
21 Will Chudley
22 Sam Morley
23 Harrison Cully
24 Harry Strong
CHIEFS SIDE TO FACE DRAGONS
15 Max Bodilly
14 Olly Woodburn
13 Michele Campagnaro
12 Ian Whitten
11 James Short
10 Henry Slade
9 Nic White
1 Ben Moon
2 Jack Yeandle (capt)
3 Harry Williams
4 Dave Dennis
5 Jonny Hill
6 Sam Skinner
7 Don Armand
8 Sam Simmonds
16 Shaun Malton
17 Billy Keast
18 Tomas Francis
19 Wilhelm van der Sluys
20 Thomas Waldrom
21 Jack Maunder
22 Gareth Steenson
23 Harrison Cully