Western Morning News (Saturday)
‘There is a huge group of people that have had a big involvement in everything to get us to this point’ - Rob Baxter
WHEN Rob Baxter first pulled on an Exeter rugby shirt, he can hardly have imagined that he would one day be leading the club in rugby union’s most prestigious club game of all – the European Champions Cup final.
Baxter was just 16 when his own personal association with the club began. The son of club stalwart John Baxter, Rob started out as a colt before progressing to the first team, where he was to go on and make in excess of 300 appearances across two spells, sandwiched by a brief stint up the M5 at Gloucester.
When his playing days came to an end, the former club captain joined the coaching staff before being given the top job in 2009. It transpired to be a wise appointment and the club have never looked back. But while he has been very much at the forefront of this incredible success story, Baxter modestly shies away from taking the plaudits.
“I played Colts rugby for Exeter when I was 16 or 17, so that was 33 or 34 years ago,” Baxter says, on the eve of today’s clash against French giants Racing 92. “Does the last 20-odd years feel like it’s half your life? Of course it doesn’t. It feels like the blink of an eye.
“It feels like a fantastic journey and it has been great, but the important things are what we do every day and what we do every week and what we do every month. And that is what we have got right as a club.
“People talk about me and my involvement at the club, but Ali (Hepher) has been here for 10 or 11 years now. Ricky Pellow has been here – and part of our coaching team – for 15 years, maybe even longer, because he was involved with the Academy first and Rob Hunter has
been here seven or eight years. Julian Salvi has been involved with the club for four or five years now.
“There are players that have played here now for over ten years. Tony (Rowe) has been involved for 20-odd years, so there is a huge group of people here that have had a big involvement in everything to get us to this point.
“It looks like a bigger story for me because I was here as a player but, if you actually talk about the management of where we have been as a club, there is an awful lot of us that have had just as much responsibility in helping the club move forward.”
There are many Baxter has not mentioned as well, stalwarts from the club’s days as an amateur outfit that would run out at the club’s old County Ground stadium in the St Thomas area of the city. Now, they are very much part of the furniture behind the scenes at Sandy Park.
Many players have also been involved in that journey and that fact really hit home this week when the club announced the tragic passing of former player Ian ‘Danger’ Stewart, who sadly lost his battle with cancer at the age of 53.
Stewart was a former team-mate of Baxter’s, playing for the club for eight years between 1988 and 1996 and while much of the club’s focus is understandably on this afternoon’s events at Ashton Gate, Exeter’s director of rugby was not too pre-occupied to pay his own fitting tribute to a well-liked guy, who played his own small part in the club’s rise to the top.
“He was an amazing guy and someone we would still see regularly around the club until recently,” said Baxter. “People need to remember the journey to where we are now didn’t start a year ago, it didn’t start two years ago, even ten years ago.
“I played with Ian when we were in the fourth division and he was part of the team that helped get us promoted out of the fourth division.
”He was also part of the team that helped get us promoted out of third division, and he played in the game at Reading that got us into what is the Championship now.
“Everyone who knows him, played alongside him, or just saw him play, they will all know he was a great player for this club. Like a few players who played for Exeter, maybe if he had opportunities to live elsewhere or grow up in a different part of the country, he could easily have played frontline rugby.
“Yes, he did used to scare everyone, he scared me as captain, and that’s why he had the nickname ‘Danger’. There were times he could be as dangerous for us as he was for the opposition – and there is a truth to that – but on the whole, I loved playing with him.
“He was a great squad man, great socially, and certainly looking at the chats going on currently amongst the former players, you can see the love for him and how much he will be missed.”
To reach this stage, Exeter have already seen off Glasgow Warriors, La Rochelle and Sale Sharks in the group stage before lockdown and then Northampton Saints and Toulouse in the knock-out stages.
Baxter hopes that semi-final win against a French powerhouse will serve as evidence to his players that they can beat the best on the continent, although he knows only too well they will have to be at their best to become European champions.
“I think that was very important for us because I think it proved a couple of things. It proved we could put together an effective game plan – you will have heard me talk about an 80 minute game plan – and we stuck to that absolutely fantastically well as a team despite weathering quite a lot of moments of pressure.
“Hopefully that will give us that faith and confidence that that’s how the game will be. We will have some moments and momentum built from the opposition and you have to withstand that, stick at it and fight, you have to weather those storms and fight it back your way.
“Again, that was one of those games that you need to learn from and to learn how to win the next big game you come to and hopefully some of those lessons will help us this weekend.”