Chiefs trio aim to build ironclad case for Eddie
EXETER’S snubbed double winners will keep bashing down the door to prove their worthiness for England recognition, vows livewire scrum-half Jack Maunder.
By common consent, brothers Sam and Joe Simmonds – arguably the immaculate Maunder, too – should have been part of Eddie Jones’ Autumn Nations Cup squad.
Sam, the current European player of the year, has been in sensational form with six Premiership tries this season, while Joe has continued his metronomic kicking form while guiding the league and European champions to three impressive wins from three.
Jones’ stubborn refusal to entertain their claims is a mystery but as Exeter prepare to open their Champions Cup defence against
Glasgow today, Maunder told The Rugby Paper: “Sam and Joe have been awesome for us for a while and it’s nice they’re being recognised by others outside the Chiefs environment because we know how important they are to us.
“They get us moving and when we’re not playing at our best those two make something happen out of nothing. Hopefully, they’ll keep putting in big performances, keep knocking down that door and will get their opportunity (at England level). ”
As for his own claims, Maunder adds: “I went into a camp earlier this year and that was awesome. I got sent away with things to work on so I’m just keeping my head down and paying attention to the bits and bobs Eddie wants, while playing as well as I can for Exeter.
“Everybody says it, but it is really important to play well for your mates and your club first and then, hopefully, the better you play for Chiefs, the more opportunities you’ll get elsewhere. That’s definitely in the forefront of my mind as we start the Champions Cup.”
Exeter’s ability to surge on after October’s twin European and Premiership triumphs has been utterly remarkable given how little time they had to celebrate or take in the scale of their achievement before being thrust headlong into a new campaign at Harlequins.
Maunder explains: “It’s weird but it’s actually been a positive because we’ve had to move on pretty quickly. We haven’t had time to pat ourselves on the back or think what a wonderful side we are because we had two weeks off and were straight back into it.
“Quite a few of the boys have seen it as a positive that we’ve been forced to set new challenges and stay in the moment. Don’t get me wrong, we all enjoyed winning those trophies and celebrated properly, but we’ve grown and we didn’t need to be told to refocus.
“Our leaders are so good that we didn’t need any bollockings when we got back into training. We all still had that contact-readiness about us.
“We relaxed for a couple of weeks and that was important because playing back-to-back finals is mentally and physically hard, but we didn’t have that five weeks off where you can relax too much and do damage to your body.
“Rob Baxter and the coaches were brilliant with us in that first week back and got us straight back into enjoying being with each other again. That’s the key to it, we do enjoy playing together so getting back into games was fun and we’re even hungrier for success now.”
In October, Maunder, 23, became the second youngest starting No.9 to win a Heineken Cup final since Frederic Michalak helped guide Toulouse to victory over Perpignan in 2003 – underlining Maunder’s vast potential to add to the single England cap he won in 2017.
Making that achievement more special was the fact Maunder did it alongside close friend and long-time teammate Joe Simmonds, who became the third youngest fly-half to start and win a Heineken Cup final since Andy Goode in 2001 and the remarkable Michalak in 2005.
“That’s awesome,” says Maunder. “It’s the pinnacle of club rugby and, as a couple of young half-backs who are in the same year, it was all the sweeter to do it with ‘Simmo’.
“But we don’t want to stop there and we’ve all spoken about how awesome it would be to go back-toback because the challenge is even bigger now. Being the reigning champions does put a marker down and we know teams are really going to come at us now.
“That starts against Glasgow because they’ll be up for it, they’ll be physical and they’ll have some really big players back from international duty. If we were in their shoes, we’d be licking our lips, so we’ve got to be mentally and physically ready for this.”