By Jack Sanderson
After a heartbreaking last-minute loss against Northampton Saints last weekend, Exeter Chiefs are gearing up to get back to winning ways and keep their unbeaten start to their Champions Cup campaign intact against Glasgow Warriors.
Having opened their 2023/24 Champions Cup account with an impressive win away in Toulon, followed by a strong victory at home to Irish outfit Munster, the Chiefs will now host the Warriors in their second block of pool matches.
The Warriors sit in third place in the group on four points, behind the Chiefs and Northampton Saints, who both have nine points from their opening two games. With the visit of the Warriors, followed by a second trip to France to face Bayonne next weekend, the Chiefs know that a bonus point win against the Scottish side this Saturday would guarantee a top two finish in the group, giving them a supposedly easier draw in the Round of 16.
This round of Champions Cup fixtures comes after two wins in the league in late December against Leicester and Bristol, but also follows a narrow defeat at Sandy Park at the hands of Northampton Saints. Northampton became the first team to beat the Chiefs at Sandy Park since the fourth of December 2022, when the Saints were once again victorious down in Devon in a 26-19 victory.
This time round though, the Saints managed to overturn a 26-14 halftime deficit, touching down over the try line in the 80th minute to win 42-36, and breaking the hearts of many a Chiefs fan in and amongst the 14,091 Sandy Park faithful. However, Exeter’s Director of Rugby Rob Baxter says, his side have moved on from the emotional disappointment of the loss last Saturday.
“We haven’t picked up too much, a couple of bumps and bruises as you do, but on the whole we’ve come through the game pretty well. I’ve just been watching our last main training session of the week and the boys are flying around.
“I think we’ve got over that emotional disappointment around the game last week. There were some nerves from us, as there are when you win or when you lose, but I think we’ve dealt with those things now and we’re ready to move on, which looks good for us”.
The last three times the Warriors have made the trip to Sandy Park, they have left with nothing to take home, having been beaten convincingly on the trio of attempts by the Chiefs. The three latest score lines read 34-18, 42-0, and most recently a heavy 52-17 beating two years ago in the Champions Cup. However, Rob Baxter was hesitant to speak on the recipe for success in that record, after the Chiefs’ incredible home record was brought to an end by the Saints last weekend.
“I didn’t really want you to bring that up after people had brought it up last week about the length of our unbeaten home run before the Northampton game, because every record goes at some stage and everything falls over at some stage.
“But I think on the whole, especially in recent years, we’ve had a lot of ambitions to do well in the Champions Cup competition, that’s always kind of piqued our interest and piqued our energy, and obviously we’re good at home and we’ve used that as well.
“We had a frontline Premiership team that was towards the front stages of the Premiership year in year out, so there have been a few factors, but we’ve tended to turn up on the day against Glasgow.
“Having said that, they’ve turned up on the day when we’ve played them up there as well, so it’s not like it’s always been a one sided affair, it’s just happened to go with home form. We’ve just got to make sure we do the right things to make sure that we maintain that.
“It’s like I said, you can never assume that home advantage will win you a game, you’ve got to use everything you have in your power to make that happen, and for this group in particular, that’s us turning up with great energy and great emotion and throwing everything we can into the game.”
With just two games remaining in the pool stages of this year’s Champions Cup competition, the Chiefs currently sit five points ahead of Glasgow, and six ahead of Bayonne and Munster, meaning a bonus point win against Glasgow this weekend would see the Chiefs consolidate a top two finish.
However, despite the lure of such a finish in the group, Rob Baxter and his Chiefs side are focusing solely on ‘getting back to winning ways’.
“Obviously initially we want to qualify. If we qualify we then would like it to be in that top two to get that home last 16 match, and if you’re looking like finishing in the top two you want to be fighting for that top slot and then try and be able to follow that through into the last 16.
“We’re ticking boxes as we go, but the box right here and now is to get back to winning games of rugby, then we’ll see where we stand in the table and then we can start to see what we need to do in Bayonne, but the truth is, the lads are really excited about these two weeks.
“They’re really looking forward to the Glasgow game and I know they’re already looking forward to the Bayonne game, we’ve got a long turnaround for Bayonne which will get us excited and ready. We’re staying overnight over there, which is normally a good sign for the lads, they tend to perform pretty well when they know they’re going to get a few hours together in a bar somewhere.
“There’s a lot of things for us to get excited about and look forward to, but first and foremost we just want to put in a great performance on the pitch.”
Having played 91 times for the Chiefs, and after two tries in his last two games in the league, Devon born scrum-half Stu Townsend is looking forward to two big upcoming games in the Champions Cup and thinks the Chiefs can get themselves into a great position going into the Round of 16 with the visit of the Scottish side this weekend.
“They (Glasgow) need to go out and win, so they’ll be fully going for it so I think it’s going to be a hell of a contest. It’s us and Northampton on similar points in that group, so I think another win this weekend knocks us on to potentially getting a home last 16 tie so we’ll all be going for that, and then if we win this week, I think we’ll all be going for Bayonne away next week to try and get top seed, and the boys are gunning for it and ready to go.”
With the Chiefs being such a young squad, players such as Stu Townsed, who is only 28 years of age, are now looked up to and studied by the younger players in the squad due to his experience and amount of game he’s played for the club. Whilst being looked up to by so many might normally be quite a weight on a player’s shoulders, Townsend is taking it all in his stride, and loving every minute of it, but admits he might not be doing all the teaching.
“It’s nice, I think it’s very refreshing. They’re obviously learning all the time, but some of those younger players are teaching us sometimes. It’s a great squad at the minute and they’re thriving to get out there and go and play so I’ll just keep on jumping on the bandwagon and go with them.”
One player that both sides would have loved to have seen in action this weekend is Jonny Gray. The Scottish lock played 110 times over an eight year stint for the Glasgow Warriors, from whom he left in 2020 to join Exeter Chiefs, and has since played 48 times for the Devon side, scoring 10 tries. His chance to play against his old side in this year’s competition has unfortunately been ruled out after Gray was unable to complete his recovery from a dislocated kneecap injury he sustained in Exeter’s Champions Cup semi-final defeat to La Rochelle in May.
Despite some knock-backs in Gray’s road to recovery, Chiefs DoR Rob Baxter, is confident of a return to action in the upcoming weeks for the Scotland international.
“He was initially supposed to be out for six months, which would have been around the time of the start of the Premiership, but that’s ended up being knocked back to November time, which has ended up being knocked back further as things have gone along, but we’re hopeful he will be back during this break period that’s going to happen now before we continue back in the Premiership.
“Over this period he should be back to pretty much there or thereabouts, but like I say, by the time we get back into the Premiership he should be up and running and in full training. That’s what I’m being told at the moment. We’ve had that message a couple of times but that’s where we are at the moment.”