Exeter Chiefs’ slide into the doldrums since they won the Premiership and European Cup double less than five years ago has deepened this season. And the pressing question is: do Tony Rowe and Rob Baxter have what it takes to engineer a revival?
The humdrum results had dramatic consequences for two of the long-serving director of rugby Baxter’s stalwart assistant coaches in recent weeks. Ali Hepher was demoted to an academy role and replaced by Rob Hunter as head coach in March, then both men were suspended after a record Chiefs defeat, 79-17 at Gloucester two weeks ago, then Hunter was shown the door a few days later.
Baxter has stepped back into coaching the team, at least to the end of the season, after Rowe, the chairman/chief executive, was seen berating the squad in the changing room after the Gloucester debacle.
By the time of this week’s press session on Wednesday, Baxter wanted only to look ahead, but he could not answer definitively when asked to confirm ex-Wasps and Newcastle Falcons fly-half Dave Walder had arrived in the attack and backs role vacated by Hepher.
“I’m not saying anything,” Baxter said, although The i Paper has been told Walder has been involved in Chiefs’ training for just over a week.
Rob Baxter has assumed coaching responsibilities at Sandy Park (Photo: Getty)A rumour of the club talking to ex-England head coach Stuart Lancaster sums up the uncertainty of where the Chiefs stand. Can they afford to make the hire? And are the 76-year-old Rowe and the 54-year-old Baxter, who are so tightly intertwined with each other and everything the club have achieved, willing to cede power to a strong voice with new ideas?
Nick Easter, currently in charge at Championship club Chinnor, is another name doing the rounds.
The i Paper understands Rowe, who has pumped money for two decades into a club still owned by its 700 members, though they tend to go by his decisions, admits to being dogged by two errors he and Baxter made: one long-term, one more recent.
The pair have already detailed how the stellar group of players at the heart of that double in 2020 – including the class of 1993 of Henry Slade, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Jack Nowell and Sam Hill, born that year – became a financial problem due to the initially favourable contracts they were awarded during the money-draining pandemic period.
That in itself was not the mistake, Rowe is understood to believe – rather it was Exeter having not blooded enough other youngsters, and left to rely on middling squad players with little Premiership experience when Cowan-Dickie, Nowell, Dave Ewers, Sam and Joe Simmonds, Jonny Hill and other top players left for more lucrative deals or a different lifestyle at other clubs.
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The second cock-up was not appreciating the size of the hole left at fly-half by Joe Simmonds, who has prospered in his two seasons with Pau in France. His spot has been filled by Slade this season, with Harvey Skinner as back-up, and Joe Hawkins not moved from the centres. And many a Chiefs fan would say both half-back positions have been too weak for too long.
They lost a super-strength of the team when the try-line drop-out law negated the favourite pick-and-go tactic, while Baxter directing young players to Exeter University – a highly laudable idea, in one way – has meant them missing the grounding they used to receive in the Championship or National League.
On the plus side, relegation is not a threat with the way the Premiership is set up, and on paper there is plenty of talent in Dafydd Jenkins, Greg Fisilau, Christ Tshiunza, Ross Vintcent, Josh Hodge and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, and the next generation of Kane James, Ben Coen, Oscar Beckerleg and Louie Gulley.
Chiefs’ new signings for next season are led by 39-cap Australia centre Len Ikitau – who could be a formidable centre partner to Slade, assuming the latter resists any offer from French clubs – and scrum-halves Stephen Varney and Charlie Chapman.
But injuries have bitten hard. Feyi-Waboso dislocated a shoulder in December and is “touch and go” to make it back for the regular-season final round on 31 May, while Fisilau, Hawkins (who anyway is returning to Wales with Scarlets next season), Ben Hammersley and Max Norey are probably done till next season.
On the coaching front, assistant coaches Julian Salvi, Gareth Steenson and Omar Mouneimne have come and gone. Another long server, Ricky Pellow, remains on skills and development, with Ross McMillan on the forwards and Haydn Thomas on defence.
The most troubling aspect to some of Chiefs’ followers would be if Baxter has lost the changing-room. He has been connected with the club almost all his life, initially through his dad John. These feel like pivotal times, as Sunday brings an under-strength Northampton Saints to Sandy Park.
“We were once in the fourth tier of English rugby and we had plans then on where we were going, and we made them happen,” Baxter said on Wednesday.
“We’ve got plans on where we’re going now, and it’s my job to be part of making that happen. This is a scenario that we’ve done before, and my expectation is we’ll do it again.
“We’re not suddenly making radical changes. [But] we’ve almost not realised that our expectations have dropped quite low. Our expectations of ourselves have got to change.”
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