We won’t stop until the final whistle - Yeandle
CHAMPIONS Cup veteran Jack Yeandle has no doubt Exeter’s exciting young guns will rise to another big occasion in Toulouse today.
Exeter take on the fivetime European champions for the first time on French soil with an unchanged XV knowing that victory would put them two wins away from repeating their 2020 triumph.
The Chiefs showed great resilience to win away in France in their first game of this season’s campaign, coming from behind to beat Toulon thanks to Henry Slade’s dramatic match-winning conversion and also had to dig deep to see off Bath in the last 16.
Players like rising England and Italy stars Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Ross Vintcent have really stood up to be counted and Yeandle is backing them to deliver again.
“You’ve got young lads in there who are now international superstars. Just because they are young doesn’t mean that they are not experienced,” the 34-year-old said.
“We have had this socalled new team in for a season now and I think in most big occasions they have stepped up. So I’d like to think they have got enough experience to go out there and thrive.
“The big focus is going to be staying on our game plan and what we want to enforce on them. Just because it is a big game in a big stadium against a big team, it doesn’t mean you need to change how you go about things.
“I think you saw that in the manner of how we played last week (against Bath). It was a big game, particularly after the previous week when we had a really poor performance away at Sale, but it didn’t mean we went and changed the way we played or how we went about things, I think it was just a lot of simple things done really, really well and an intensity that ultimately got us over the line in the end.
“In that first half Bath kept us out but, longer term it made us grow as a team because we kept pounding the rock, and if you keep on hitting it and hitting it, eventually the rock is going to break.”
The hooker added: “It’s a challenge we want to have a go at. Look at what the lads did in that first game at Toulon. We were 18 points down and fronted up to it and came up with the right result. We’re not going to go there and lie on our backs and let them do what they want; you have got to embrace it, and that is the joy of the Champions Cup, you can go up against some amazing teams in some amazing venues but it is still a game of rugby.
“Toulouse when they have a go, it is one in and all in, they start going from absolutely everywhere. If we can contain some of that super-strength, it can potentially become a weakness, but we have got to make sure that happens not just think it is going to happen.”
Yeandle, now in his 11th season at Exeter, is looking forward to playing at Stade Ernest Wallon, especially as Exeter’s scheduled match there in 2020 was cancelled due to Covid.
Now that the clock is ticking on his playing days, these are the experiences he is determined to savour, even more so now than earlier in his Chiefs career.
“Ian Whitten messaged me in the week and said good luck out there, it was always somewhere he wanted to play, and it does make you think it was not that long ago that he retired. That’s probably from me knowing more players on the other side of rugby now. A lot of lads I came through with are now outside it,” said Yeandle.
“When I look back on some of my European trips, Clermont away was one of my first or second appearances and I had to come on in the back row and it was just so new and almost like over the top for me and I didn’t really take every single drop of it in.”
Yeandle will draw level with former centre Whitten on 51 Champions Cup appearances for Exeter today, ranking him joint-second behind Henry Slade.
Almost half of those games have come against French opposition, and Yeandle has grown to relish cross-Channel encounters.
“I have played a lot against the French, and they are always great games. It’s fun to play against them because particularly with away games, the atmosphere is incredible. As you get older, you really enjoy the occasions. I am really looking forward to getting stuck into it.”
Yeandle came off the bench when Exeter beat Racing 92 31-27 at an empty Ashton Gate in the 2020 final. And while that was a moment he’ll never forget, winning it again in front of fans would be even more special.
“Winning it in the past was amazing, the absolute pinnacle of club rugby. But when we won the Premiership final in 2017, when we had fans and family and friends around around, that’s something that sits so well in your memory and will never leave you.
“The celebrations we had in the changing room in Bristol were amazing, it is just different in that it was very much enjoying it with the lads and then now what? To do it in front of fans, and many other teams and players have done that before, would be once in a lifetime stuff.”
First, Toulouse – who defeated Racing 92 31-7 last Sunday – need to be beaten and few outside Devon will be backing 16/1 outsiders Exeter who won the only previous match between the teams at Sandy Park en route to their 2020 title.
A defiant Yeandle has a different take on it. “There is a fool of a man who writes off an underdog. We are not going to give up the fight until that last whistle is blown.”