Baxter happy to see his Chiefs back from injury
Two-week break has given Exeter players time to get back, or get close, to full fitness
EXETER Chiefs are getting ‘progressively stronger’ in terms of their decreasing injury list over the coming weeks director of rugby Rob Baxter has confirmed.
Topping the bill of players back in full training ahead of the trip to Worcester Warriors in Round Seven of the Gallagher Premiership tomorrow is fly-half and captain Joe Simmonds who injured his ankle in Exeter Chiefs’ 20-7 defeat to Bristol Bears last time out.
With two unexpectedly free weekends just gone after the pool stages of the European Heineken Champions Cup were cancelled due to Covid concerns, a number of key Chiefs players are either back fit or nearing a return to action.
Baxter said: “Time going by on all injuries works wonders, so this break means frontline players who have been off so far are closer to returning.
“Alex Cuthbert is back in full training now and available for selection which is great, obviously this break has allowed Joe Simmonds a fair bit of time to get over that ankle strain which wasn’t as bad as anyone initially feared and he is back in full training now.
“Stu Townsend is now back from his suspension and training really, really well and some key players like Jannes Kirsten, Jacques Vermeulen, Jack Nowell and Ben Moon, are progressing down that pathway to a return.”
Lock Vermeulen had shoulder surgery at the start of the season while his South African flanker compatriot Kirsten is recovering from a fractured eye socket which required an operation.
England international winger Nowell has not featured for the club so far this season after going under the knife for a foot/toe injury which he played through the pain with as Exeter won the European and domestic double in October.
Prop Moon is recovering from a minor operation on his neck.
Baxter continued: “Things are looking good, it feels like over the next month we will become progressively stronger despite having our internationals away, so it feels like we are going to have a really interesting block of eight games now.
“It is going to challenge us, but challenge us in the way that we need. We need something quite exciting and new and this could be the making of us.
“If we can come through this period stronger than we went into it then that will really excite me.
“Facundo Cordero [full back] is back in full training as well, he only had a relatively minor hamstring issue, he is back in full training so the options we had initially when our internationals went away [in the Autumn] from when we won that first block of games, are all back in the mix now.
“We haven’t had Jacques Vermeulen at all so far this season and he is closing in on a return over the next number of weeks, Jannes with his facial injury is closing in, Nowellsy with his foot injury is a few weeks away again. They are a little way away, they are not going to be involved in these next couple of games but they will progressively start to appear for us.”
While Chiefs will be without their England contingent of Jonny Hill, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Henry Slade and Harry Williams this weekend, with the quartet going into a pre-Six Nations training camp and now ruled out of club duty for the next eight weekends, Baxter will be able to call upon Welsh prop Tomas Francis and Scottish duo Stuart Hogg and Jonny Gray for the trip to Worcester.