I’D WANT TO DO THE ENGLAND JOB WITH NO FEAR
Rob Baxter, the favourite to replace Jones, chases more glory with Exeter
ONE DAY there will be a statue of Rob Baxter outside Sandy Pa r k . Whether Exeter win the Aviva Premiership title for the second year running today, whether they ever lift any trophy again, one day they will salute their big chief.
For a team to go from cannonfodder to champions in seven years is a mighty feat.
Exeter are back at Twickenham today to defend their Premiership crown against Saracens, as talk returns of their director of rugby taking up a more permanent residence at rugby HQ. Baxter is the prime English candidate to take over from Eddie Jones and many people think the job is his to lose.
Speaking candidly, Baxter says: ‘I’d want to be able to do it with absolutely no fear. That might sound a bit odd but I think to do it really well I would want no fear. You have to be confident that you won’t be worrying where you’ll end up in two years’ time.
‘At this stage there would still be an element of me that would think, “I’m 47 and I’ve got the England job. Where will I end up if the next Six Nations doesn’t quite go right?” I’d want to say, “I’m going to do it my way” and if my way works, fantastic. But it doesn’t I can deal with that as well. I don’t feel I’m in that scenario at the moment, I genuinely don’t.
‘It would be the wrong reasons to leave Exeter now, say, if the England job came up. I could not say, “right, I’ll sit down with a whole load of England players and they’ll know exactly how Rob Baxter does things”.
‘It doesn’t work like that. Unless you’re comfortable in that scenario you shouldn’t take the job as you won’t do it very well.’
Exeter Chiefs, whose mantra for success is ‘doing it right, staying grounded’, are a club built in Baxter’s image. So while he is the most level-headed of characters, you can see why home-town success last year brought a tear to his eye. ‘I am human,’ he says. ‘I don’t look around and think none of it’s fantastic. If someone asked me whether I’d achieved my dreams in rugby I would say, “of course I have”. I am at a club that has proven — whether we ever do it again — we were the best club in the country.
‘People ask me whether it feels like a dream. It was amazing but it does not feel like a dream because when you’ve been involved for so long, seen the ups and downs, the steps taken, you wouldn’t call it a dream.’
What makes others call it so is the way it has been done — treating players like adults, allowing them their midweek ‘cookie club’, post-match pints, mad haircuts and all. And doing it not with polished diamonds but often rough ones.
‘It isn’t anything more complicated than believing what you’re seeing with your eyes and then believing what you hear in your ears,’ explains Baxter, who still spends hours ‘coding’ matches, analysing them himself.
‘I don’t care what players wear, or what they look like. We have never recruited, or not recruited, on body shape, fat percentage or whatever. It’s been on how they play. It sounds ridiculously simple but it seems to work.’
Some coaches would panic if only four of the squad who started last year’s final feature in today’s line-up but the fact that 21-year-old fly-half Joe Simmonds has never played at Twickenham but has been selected ahead of club legend Gareth Steenson shows Baxter to be brave — and building again.
He points out that the coaching team are all under 50 and today’s starting XV has eight players aged 25 or younger. ‘At this stage, do I want to go and spend time in another country doing something else? No,’ he says. ‘Can I see myself coaching another Premiership club at this stage of my career? No. That would be pretty tough, for both myself and whichever club wanted me to do it.
‘So whether it ends, or continues, I would like to be able to come on a Saturday, have a couple of beers with my mates, enjoy some nice food, sit with my wife Jo and her friends and just enjoy Exeter playing really well. That is how I would like it to end.’
EXETER: Turner; Nowell, Slade, Hill, Woodburn; J Simmonds, White; Hepburn, Cowan-Dickie, Francis, Lees, Hill, Ewers, Armand, S Simmonds.
SARACENS: Goode; Maitland, Lozowski, Barritt, Wyles; Farrell, Wigglesworth; M Vunipola, George, Koch, Itoje, Kruis, Isiekwe, Wray, B Vunipola.
Referee: Wayne Barnes.