Lees is on England radar

By Mark Stevens

Rob Baxter has admitted that a number of his squad are in the thoughts of new England head coach Eddie Jones.

The Australian was among the Sandy Park crowd last Saturday as he watched the Chiefs maintain their impressive run of form with a 31-14 victory over ASM Clermont Auvergne in the European Champions Cup.

Just three days later and Jones was back in Devon once more for a morning meeting with Baxter and his trusty lieutenants Ali Hepher and Rob Hunter.

“It was a good meeting and our first contact with Eddie,” explained Baxter. “We discussed a few players that you’d expect to discuss, by that I mean those who have been involved before, and a we chatted about others as well.

“Chatting with him he said he was pretty impressed with where we are in the table, the way we are playing and the good results we’ve pick up. It’s was nothing more than you’d expect to talk about.

“Right now it’s still very early days, so there were no shocking revelations on his part. I found him very easy to talk to, he was very straight-forward and talked a lot of common sense, it was all what we expected.”

Baxter added: “He’s talked about starting with a clean slate, which is a great message for our lads, but as I’ve said before it’s important that we keep doing what we’ve been doing and that we have the form players when the squad gets picked in a few weeks time.

“No one can afford to rest on their laurels, especially as we have some big games coming up. Our guys have to make sure they don’t underperform at Clermont this weekend, then against Sale and Northampton because those are the big games running into the selection of the EPS squad.”

One player who is believed to have caught the eye of Jones is Exeter lock Mitch Lees (pictured), who has enjoyed an outstanding campaign to date, including tries in his last two outings.

Baxter confirmed the 27-year-old forward had been brought up in conversation on Tuesday, saying: “We did speak about Mitch. He has been under the radar somewhat since he came over from Australia. Obviously he had a spell with London Welsh and he’s been here a couple of years, but he’s playing really well.

“Both myself and Rob Hunter said we don’t need to say too much, instead just review the games he’s played recently and you’ll like what you see. I say it all the time, I am a big believer what you see with your own eyes is best and right now Mitch’s actions speak louder than any words I can say.

“He’s been playing a big man’s game in our side and he’s been doing it very well. There are not many players in the country doing what he’s doing right now. He is a gain line stopper for us defensively, he carries over the gain line with some hard carries and people are aware our set-piece game has been going very well and he’s helped hold that together.

“All that, together with a number of big clear outs, and it all starts to add up into a very tidy performance.”