By Jack Sanderson
After a historic 18-19 Champions Cup victory against Toulon last Saturday, Exeter now prepare for the arrival of Munster, who have lost just twice in their last eight games. With this weekend’s away team sat in fourth place in the United Rugby Championship, Rob Baxter’s side can expect as tough an afternoon this Sunday, as they had in the South of France last weekend.
With that incredible victory in France, the Chiefs now sit joint top of their pool, alongside Northampton Saints on four points from their first game. However, despite the Chief’s great start to the competition, their Director of Rugby Rob Baxter is adamant that his side won’t start to get ahead of themselves too soon.
“I think we’ve got to be a little bit careful in starting to talk about building the group and collecting points. You know, as far as I’m concerned, we talked before these two weeks about the opportunity to take part in two massive, almost one of occasions. Going to Toulon, it’s ten years since we’ve been there before, it’s a great rugby city.
“You’ve got to go out there and you attack it as a ‘one off’ game and you go after it. You see what you can get out of it, and you learn every bit out of it that you can, you make it an incredible experience for yourself, for the team, and for the supporters”
Although Munster have only lost twice in their last eight matches, they have accrued a number of draws, with one coming last weekend at home to Bayonne. Rob Baxter views this result as dangerous, and could make this weekend’s Irish opposition an even more dangerous side to play.
“Now the winning of it (Toulon game) has almost made this game an even bigger one off. Because you look at the circumstances with Munster, obviously they’re going to be frustrated and disappointed by not winning at home in round one. So that doubles things up. They’ve potentially got a couple of international quality players coming back.
“Particularly if someone like Peter O’Mahony comes back, you know the first 20 minutes there’s going to be a lot of blood and thunder out there in particular. That gives us the realisation that we’ve got to step up in that first 20 minutes and get ready to go to war”.
After an impressive performance last Saturday in France, Chiefs centre Tommy Wyatt was full of praise for his side’s performance against Toulon. However, he admitted that he couldn’t watch Henry Slade kick the winning conversion, on what was a historic day for Wyatt and his teammates.
“I was just looking at the ground, I didn’t really watch it, but I was obviously hugely excited when it went over, but until I got back into the changing room it didn’t really sink in what had just happened”.
Wyatt is one of the many talented youngsters that Rob Baxter has in his armoury this season, having joined the Chiefs via their outreach programme in 2019. Having played for the likes of Minehead RFC and North Petherton, as well as helping Taunton win the National Two South title in the 2019/20 season, his rise to the Premiership has been fast and impressive. Wyatt has certainly been climbing the levels of club rugby to reach his goal, which is something he hears a little too often from a certain family member!
“You sound like my mum there, she’s always telling me that! I sort of reflect on it in the off season, but when you’re playing week in week out, you tend to just keep your head down and keep going forward.
“I’m really enjoying it. There’s a bit more weight on my shoulders now, being an established player and having something expected of you, having just broken into the side, but I’m really relishing it and looking forward to each week, so it’s really good.”
After quite an inconsistent start to the season this year, which is especially in Exeter’s October results, (two wins and two losses), Tommy Wyatt knows the importance of backing up Saturday’s tremendous victory over Toulon with another victory against Munster this weekend.
“That’s something we speak about as players, and being there emotionally and in the right place in your mind each week, is obviously massively important. Winning away from home is something we’ve struggled with but it’s something we’re working on.
“I think sticking to our system is something we speak about a lot, and that’s how we’re trying to go forward really, in getting the consistency in what we’re doing.”
Previous to the Toulon game last Saturday, Rob Baxter spoke about his desire for his side to take the game as a big learning experience, and that he wanted his players to take what they could out of it. Despite the monumental result, Baxter gave his thoughts on whether his side might have benefited more from losing the game, in order to learn things the hard way.
“Time will tell. With all these things, you’re always hoping the groups learn very quickly, but you never really know until you kind of get further down the line. What was nice was probably for the first time this season in an away game, the lads will have felt and seen the benefits of when you dig in there, and the game starts to get to the final quarter, and the scores get back towards that one score can win it, and how much effect it can have on the opposition, especially when their crowds start getting a bit fretful.
“You find one or two ways to get at them, which kind of started to happen around the scrum and we were starting to keep the ball for longer periods. Our kicking game was keeping them pinned back. They obviously picked up injuries around the half backs that were making it hard for them to exit. Our lads could sense that and just kept putting the ball in behind them and forcing them to do it again and again.
“For me, that would be the key for them. If they’ve learned that all that hard work and all that fighting and everything you do in that first 20 minutes means that you can stay competitive, they can slowly build their way back into a game.”
Going into this weekend’s game, the Chiefs will only be missing one player from the win at Toulon, with recently returning Imannuel Feyi-Waboso being declared unavailable after the winger got a knock. He won’t be able to pass his medical checks before this weekend.