Rugby union: Exeter’s musketeers win the Premiership

Two decades ago, Exeter Chiefs were stuck in English rugby’s fourth tier, said Mick Cleary in The Daily Telegraph. Seven years ago, they were still playing in the second tier. How extraordinary, then, that last Saturday they defeated Wasps 23-20 in extra time to become Premiership champions. It’s a triumph that looked utterly unlikely at the start of the season, when the Devon club won only two of their first seven matches. But these “all-for-one musketeers” ended the season with eight successive bonus-point victories, and at the weekend they became the first team from the Southwest – in any major sport – to win a national championship.

It was a triumph of “remarkable character”, said Sir Ian Mcgeechan in The Sunday Telegraph. There was no standout Chiefs player, precisely because this is a side that plays as a collective. Unlike their rivals, Exeter don’t splash out on big names, said Steve Bale in The Sunday Times. Instead, their coach, Rob Baxter, has assembled a gang of “waifs and strays” that he has “turned into gold”. Take Phil Dollman, who scored their second try in the final: when he was signed, “nobody else” seemed to want him. These “cast-offs” have been complemented by an “endless supply” of homegrown talent – including England star Jack Nowell – from rugby-mad Devon and Cornwall. Baxter has devised a playing style that “perfectly suits the temperament and abilities of the squad”, said Brian Moore in The Daily Telegraph. Exeter’s spine – made up of players including Dollman and Gareth Steenson, who both joined before the club was promoted – may not be flashy, but they “get the job done”. No English rugby team has ever experienced such a “remarkable rise”, said Robert Kitson in The Guardian. The only side that comes close, in any sport, is Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest F.C. in the 1970s. The season after winning the league, Forest lifted the European Cup; Exeter are now aiming to do the same.