>> Guscott: Baxter has same qualities as Rowell
Exeter Chiefs have strong similarities in key areas with the Bath side under Jack Rowell during my time as a player. Above all, you need a smart coach who has the ability to communicate brilliantly with all his players. On top of that he needs to get his message across through a talented group of assistant coaches and leading players.
You need half a dozen coaches and players who are on the same wavelength, and you need at least a couple of them who can challenge the head coach so that improvements on original ideas can be made.
The big difference with the professional era is that you now have either individual owners, or a group of owners, who have an overriding say in what direction clubs take, and who they appoint or sign. In the past, it was mainly the head coach who had the vision, and he selected a captain and a few senior coaches who had influence over the playing squad to put it into practice.
These days it is often owners who make decisions which can change things dramatically, which adds another layer of complexity to the structure – and in order to be successful in the way Exeter have been it means that they have to be in sync with the head coach, and with the other significant influencers in and around the squad.
That’s why there is no doubt that Tony Rowe, who is the Chiefs chairman and main mover-and-shaker off the pitch, is on the same page as Baxter – and that his main coaches, Ali Hepher and Rob Hunter, and players like joint captains Joe Simmonds and Jack Yeandle, have all signed-up.
It is not something that happens overnight, and many clubs do not have the same magic ingredient in terms of alignment between owner-head coach-assistant coaches/ senior players-playing squad, as Exeter do.
It is not surprising, because even without the owner element, there are so many more moving parts you need to align in a pro club. For instance, you have many more specialist coaches now – whether defence, attack, scrum, lineout, kicking, skills, or conditioning – and all of them can be very influential, whether positive or negative.
It takes just one of them to be out of step to halt momentum, whereas another might have such a big impact that they become a key component of the progress of the squad.
The thing about Baxter is that you only have to listen to him being interviewed to see very quickly that he is talking sense. He is very straightforward, and when he analyses games during matches, I very rarely disagree with anything he says. Baxter is a very good communicator, who provides clear explanations in an understandable and objective way.
If you look at the brains trust at Exeter I think it’s pretty similar to that of other dominant English clubs before them like Saracens, Wasps, Leicester, and Bath. However, with each of those clubs that preceded the Chiefs there will have been a break in the circuit of key influencers at some stage, which means that they are no longer as successful.
When Rowell came to Bath from Gosforth he had a view of rugby and how he wanted to play it, and he sold us his vision of playing a very effective all-round game. At the time he was a successful businessman who was used to making decisions, and hiring those he thought could improve the business.
Those skills proved transferable in setting up a leadership group at Bath in the early 1980s which included assistant coaches, captain, and key senior players.
Rowell had Dave Robson and Dr Tom Hudson as assistant coaches. Robson was an accountant who was very well-connected businesswise, and a big driver in recruiting players and organising the training schedule. Hudson, who represented GB in the modern pentathlon at the 1956 Olympic Games and was director of sport at the University of Bath, brought a fitness dimension to the club which had rarely been seen in English rugby anywhere before.
When Roger Spurrell, who was a former paratrooper, arrived at the club at the same time there was an immediate affinity between him, Jack, the coaches and players, who all saw that he was a natural leader. Spurrell was made captain, and from that start there was a decade of unsurpassed success for Bath.
Rowell and his leadership group were good at identifying what type of players Bath needed, and where they fitted in, and every captain after Spurrell – with Richard Hill, Stuart Barnes and John Hall foremost – shared in the success.
The break in the circuit came when Jack Rowell left to coach England in 1995. The transition to professionalism that followed didn’t really click for Bath – and 25 years later they are still trying to fix the circuit.
The only way you can keep the circuit intact is for those in the key positions at the top of a club to be very good at spotting and promoting new coaching and playing talent at the right time.
Head coaches are still the main influencers in the pro game, and you can see that by the way one coach can get great results almost instantly, whereas others will have a nightmare. The main ingredient is to recognise that rugby clubs are all about people, and understanding how to get everyone to agree and do their job to the optimum.
That is a lot more challenging than it sounds. I don’t know Rowe, but to be successful you have to appoint good people – and Rowe got that right with Baxter.
One of the difficulties that successful clubs like Exeter face – as Bath did before them – is that while some of their players will play international rugby, others might not get as much opportunity as they’d like, and some might miss out.
For instance, while the whole of the Chiefs front row has been capped, and the same with the second row, it is not quite the same in the back row. They have got Sam Simmonds, Dave Ewers, Sam Skinner, Jannes Kirsten, Jacques Vermeulen and Don Armand all battling for places. Although Skinner is in the Scotland squad none of the others are currently in the England squad, with Simmonds kept out of the No.8 reckoning by Billy Vunipola despite being in great form.
It’s an interesting exercise to consider what sort of chance international back rowers like Sam Underhill, Tom Curry or Ben Earl would stand of getting into the Exeter back row at the moment?
You can just imagine the chats that Baxter has with English-qualified back rowers like Simmonds and Ewers. “To me, you should be in the England side – but the only thing you can do is to keep on going out there in a Chiefs shirt and smashing whoever we play.”
The situation reminds me of one of Rowell’s frequent sayings about England selection when he was at The Rec: “Good enough for England, but not good enough for Bath.”
That’s where the level was set at Bath, and in that period our conditioning was probably better than England’s.
My sense is that Exeter have something of that same attitude under Baxter– and it is an outlook they must have if they want to not only maintain their level, but improve on it.
“Baxter is a very good communicator, who provides clear explanations in an objective way”