Steenson: Time to give Joe a go for England

GARETH Steenson, Exeter’s guiding light on the pitch for over a decade, believes England should be looking to his successor Joe Simmonds sooner rather than later.

“You get to see his skills every week, we are very fortunate here at the club to seem him do it every day in training,” says the Exeter legend.

“He has stepped up unbelievably well, captained the side brilliantly, he leads the boys so well so hopefully England are watching and he will get a call up.”

Meanwhile DoR Rob Baxter was full of praise for his side’s defensive efforts which laid the foundation for victory.

“In many ways the attacking bit is the easy bit, you can always find energy for that although we do practice very hard.

“The difficult bit is finding that same energy, desire and drive in defence and we needed to do that at times today.

“It was a quite a different feeling week for us, it’s the first time we have also had another final in the backround. Normally at this stage of the season you play a Premiership semi-final and a final and that’s it, you’re done.

“This time we knew that there was a game for us next week, everything could have gone wrong for us, and the lads worked so hard they refused to let anything go wrong for us.

“I thought our defence was what won it for us, I know we’ve ended up scoring quite a lot of points and ultimately we could have conceded a few more and still have won, but on the whole our desire to defend every inch of the pitch, all the way to our try line and beyond, was incredible.

“That desire, that energy, that drive, ultimately that probably wore Bath down quicker than our attack.”

Bath director of rugby Stuart Hooper said: “Exeter’s quality of play across all facets of the game is what did for us today – they defended well, they attacked well, their set piece was spot on.

“Territory-wise we were great in the first half, but didn’t create any scoreboard pressure.”