Back in August, Tony Rowe sat in one of the meeting rooms at Sandy Park and banged his fists on the table. ‘We’re back,’ barked the Exeter Chiefs owner. ‘Watch out.’
His comment raised plenty of eyebrows. Exeter lost 14 out of 18 games last season, finishing one place above bottom in the table. They had been humbled and humiliated, free-falling from their glory days of domestic and European champions.
Rowe has got more things right than wrong in his lifetime. He is a self-made millionaire, after all. And on this season’s evidence, it seems the man from the West Country is right once again.
Exeter had not won a match by this point last season. Now they are top of the table and looking like top-four contenders, thanks to their first away victory at Saracens since 2017.
The stardust of Len Ikitau was sprinkled across the pitch. Last season, Ben Hammersley was the man tasked with patching up the Chiefs midfield, straight out of university. Ikitau was stepped things up with international pedigree, emboldening those around him, allowing Harvey Skinner to finally settle into the No 10 jersey.
Ikitau dislodged the ball from the grasp of Ben Earl in a 24-phase defensive stand in the final play. Henry Slade pilfered the loose ball and charged downfield to spark pandemonium with the bonus-point try. ‘It’s going to be a good bus journey home,’ said the centre, as the one-club celebrated with his team-mates in the away dressing room.
Exeter showed the sort of spirit we used to expect from the likes of Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie. They were shown yellow cards either side of half-time but they dug deep against Saracens, with Olly Woodburn fielding Owen Farrell’s high balls throughout.
‘I can’t sit here and say we look like a team with massive rugby IQ who don’t make errors with rock-solid discipline,’ said Exeter coach Rob Baxter. ‘But what I can say is we’re a team that don’t never away. We’ve got great spirit, great fight, great fitness. My job is to not dampen that and keep adding that little bit of detail around not beating ourselves.
‘We’ve got a squad that are the best balanced it’s been for a number of years. For the first time we’ve managed to have some high-end quality from outside the region and we’re intermingling that with a good young core of Exeter Chiefs players. Daf Jenkins, Olly Woodburn, Manny Feyi-Waboso, Greg Fisilau.
‘Games like this are when the top-quality guys stand up and that is what you saw today. Ikitau had probably his best game for us, in the toughest of circumstances that is why you bring these guys to the club.’
Changes in coaching personnel have been key to the revival. Rowe moved on from trusted assistants such as Ali Hepher and Rob Hunter, who guided the club through their glory years. Their match plan has moved away from safety-first caterpillar rucks and the back-three has been charged with electric runners.
Fisilau carried hard from No 8, wrestling back momentum after Saracens scored twice through young Noah Caluori. Jenkins ran over the top of Owen Farrell on a day to forget for the Saracens No 10, who missed a straightforward kick to take the lead in the 75th minute.
‘We probably needed to get back to our foundation elements,’ said Baxter. ‘Maybe we had taken them for granted or maybe as coaches we felt we couldn’t force them on the side a little bit because we had a young side.
‘The reality is we probably let them get away with some pretty low standards. That stopper, that Gloucester game [losing 79-14 in April] let us just go, “Bang, that is it now, we are not playing like that anymore. Training is going to be better, training is going to be harder, we are going to be fitter, we are going to be stronger, we are going to be more intense and we are not going to accept errors in training”. It is tough for a while but people start to get success and they thrive on it even more. That is the cycle I want to get in now.’
It left Mark McCall’s Saracens licking their wounds. They have lost three out of four and will welcome back Maro Itoje with open arms in the New Year. ‘You could see the fight and belief they had within the group, no panic at all, and we can learn from that,’ said McCall. ‘When some adversity and setbacks happened to us, we didn’t handle it as well as we could have. Overall, I think the performance was too inconsistent.’
This was the day of the Chiefs. They are back. Watch out.
