Captain Jack expects fierce Saints riposte
PREVIEW... Exeter v Northampton Today. Kick-off 5.30pm, Sandy Park
EXETER hooker Jack Yeandle believes his side are ready to achieve their destiny of a Premiership and Champions Cup double as they continue their imperious march against Northampton.
Club captain Yeandle, a stalwart of 31 Champions Cup matches in eight campaigns since making his bow as a back row replacement in a 46-3 defeat at Clermont in January 2013, knows Chiefs will never have a better chance of progressing with a home semi-final in the offing.
While there have been Premiership finals aplenty, success in Europe has eluded Exeter, but Yeandle knows that is all part of the journey as excitement builds ahead of a clash with a Saints outfit who have shipped a combined 139 points in their last three visits to Sandy Park. Yeandle, 30, told The
Rugby Paper: “It’s a special competition and if you look back to the last time we were in a quarter-final in 2016, we were on the wrong end of a 25-24 result against Wasps and it was absolutely heart-breaking to lose to a try and longrange kick right at the end.
“This opportunity is not something we’re going to take for granted. We’ve worked hard to get a home quarter-final so we want to really make that count and everyone’s so excited to be here and show what it means to us.
“For me, it definitely feels part of a journey – I’ve been in it from the start. I remember my first year here when we had a celebratory meal for the fact we got into the Heineken Cup. We had another when we got our first win in the competition at Scarlets – a really big moment.
“You look at the growth of the club now and how many of those little landmarks we’ve knocked off along the way, so we’re targeting every game as a win now, regardless of the opponent or team we put out, and it shows how the squad’s grown along with our ambitions.
“We’re not looking beyond this fixture but we feel we’ve got the squad depth to compete on both fronts. You’ve only got to look at results we’ve picked up using our whole squad. We’re in a good place, we’ve got to just make it count.”
Northampton arrive at what has become a graveyard venue for them on the back of a wretched run of form. They have lost six out of their seven Premiership games since the restart to plummet out of play-off contention, provoking anger among their supporters.
Yeandle gives shortshrift to the notion Saints are easy-beats, however, adding: “Ultimately, they’ve got nothing to lose at all and that’s probably when they’re at their most dangerous – they can look to force that extra offload or do something completely different or off the cuff.
“Results haven’t been going their way but we’ve got to watch out for a backlash because you can be lulled into a false sense of security. It’s going to come down to how well our team starts the game and pushes on, rather than going into it feeling comfortable.
“The last time we played Saints at home in February, we won 57-7 but after 30 minutes it was only 3-0 and we’d had to work really hard to keep out waves of attacks. We got on top of them just before half-time and it was down to how well we’d defended.
“We wore them down and we’ll need to do the same now because Saints are going to throw the kitchen sink at us. We’ve just got to make sure we do our bits well and then take our attacking opportunities when they come.”
As a dry run against Gloucester last week, Exeter’s big guns were strangely subdued during what was a harder than expected 35-22 win. The bad news for Northampton, though, is that that has only served to galvanise Chiefs’ leading lights as they rampup their Euro glory charge.
Yeandle added: “Gloucester was a bit of a flat performance for us and we’ve spoken about that because it was frustrating. But we still came away with a five-point win which is never a mean feat in the Premiership.
“If we’re getting bonuspoint wins and still coming off the pitch annoyed and irritated, that’s a good sign. There’s huge competition for places – three deep for most shirts – so you need to be performing at your best and that’s what will keep driving us all on now.”
Yeandle is on the bench with Luke Cowan-Dickie starting, with Stuart Hogg recovering from a hip knock to wear the 15 shirt.
Saints are at near fullstrength minus Piers Francis (shin), Harry Mallinder (knee) and Tom Wood (illness).