Chiefs side to face Leinster
By Mark Stevens
9/4/21
On Grand National weekend, it’s somewhat fitting that the Heineken Champions Cup pits together two of European Rugby’s leading thoroughbreds.
In a fixture worthy of providing a final spectacle itself, Exeter Chiefs and Leinster Rugby lock horns in a ‘first past the post’ quarter-final encounter at Sandy Park tomorrow (5:30pm).
With the Chiefs desperate to hang onto their champions crown secured for the first time last October in Bristol, they could not have picked a much tougher opponent in which to go head-to-head.
Leinster, four-times winners of this prize, are no strangers to the big occasion and they will arrive in Devon looking to claim a major scalp in their own quest for yet more European domination. They could only watch on last season as the Chiefs saw off Racing 92 to secure European glory, just ten years after entering into the top flight for the first time.
Since then, the clubs have met four times - including Exeter’s first-ever Heineken Cup game back in 2012 - when the visitors came within a whisker of shocking Leinster on their own patch. They went down 9-6 that down, Ignacio Mieres failing to land a last-gasp penalty which would have ensured a share of the points.
In the years that followed, Leinster became the undisputed Kings of Europe, and a side that Exeter’s Director of Rugby, Rob Baxter, watched closely to glean any kind of insight into how they brokered their success year on year.
“I don’t mind telling you that over an extended period I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking at Leinster, particularly as we’ve tried to develop parts of our game,” saids Baxter. “I’m not the defence coach here anymore, or the forwards coach, but I was for quite a long time. Particularly when I was looking at things around our set-piece and initially when we were starting to make some defensive shifts, I spent a fair bit of time looking at Leinster then, which was a few seasons ago.”
These days, the Chiefs tend to focus their attention more towards general trends within the game now, as opposed to studiously examining individual teams, but Baxter adds that he isn’t surprised his team feature prominently in the video room at Leinster HQ.
The best teams always keep a close eye on the competition.
“I think Leinster have probably become a little similar to us,” he continues. “What happens when you’re a club that wants to climb the ladder a bit, is the teams you look at the most are the teams that are winning. When we were trying to be more successful in the Premiership I obviously took a lot more time looking at what Leicester and Northampton and Wasps were doing, when we were kind of a bottom third team in the Premiership, and then Saracens a little bit later.
“Then when we were looking for a bit more success in Europe, that’s when our focus shifted a little bit more to look at Leinster and Munster and some of the French sides.
“In equal measure, as you climb the pathway, the teams you look at are the ones who are more successful. It doesn’t surprise me that they look at Exeter because for obvious reasons, that’s what we were doing five or six years ago, looking at the Leinsters and Saracens, Munster etc.
“I think it goes with the territory if I’m honest with you. I think coaching is one of those professions where we all encourage each other to steal each other’s ideas because that happens pretty much on a weekly basis, doesn’t it?
“You see one club doing something and then you see everyone else doing it. It’s kind of what happens, isn’t it? It’s just everybody developing that hybrid game to get it to suit you the best.”
Certainly, the Chiefs have grown in stature in recent years and with their squad largely unchanged for some time, together they have created a togetherness that can help them overcome the toughest of on-field obstacles.
Indeed, the growing maturity they have accrued was evident in last week’s Round of 16 victory over Lyon, where they had to come from 14-0 down to eventually triumph 47-25. A sluggish opening saw the French visitors hit the champions with two tries inside the opening eight minutes, an outcome Baxter is keen not to repeat this weekend.
“It was a funny old game,” he added. ‘We were sat there less than ten minutes into the game and already we were 14-0 down. It was funny because, in a lot of ways, I thought we started quite brightly. The only problem was we conceded two fairly soft tries. When I looked at it afterwards, a lot of what we were doing was what we said we wanted to do, we were playing well, playing with tempo, but it was Lyon who hit it us twice pretty quickly.
“That said, even though those scores came out of nothing really, I was still pretty comfortable with how we were playing. At no stage did it feel like a disaster - and I could see the same kind of feelings in the players - their body language was still positive, they didn’t appeared to be panicky, and as they showed after that first ten minutes, they dominated the rest of the game.
“Obviously, we have talked about that first ten minutes this week, but I don’t want to pigeon hole us in to doing ‘x, y and z’ - we just have to play well across the whole 80 minutes. People have predicted this weekend will be close, it may well be, I just don’t know what will happen.
“We may go points down again and win, equally we may go points up and lose. Games are not decided in that first ten minutes or the last ten minutes, it’s about the team who is in front come the final whistle. What we have to do is build a performance that makes you come out on top over that whole 80 minutes.”
Certainly, the. Chiefs have proved over time that they have the staying power to keep going until the winning line and more of the same will be needed against a Leinster outfit, who will need to be at their best to keep their hosts when poised in the all-important red zone.
As they showed against Lyon last weekend, Baxter’s side are notoriously ruthless when it comes to banging in scores so close to the line. The Chiefs leader admits it’s a process which has been drilled into his players over some time, but there remain occasions when it doesn’t always go to plan.
“I particularly remember Northampton here a few weeks ago, we lost by a point and we had about 25 goes at it and got over once,” continued Baxter. “It was (effective against Lyon), but I think a lot of other clubs are adapting to it now. I think it is something more teams are adapting to and looking at because of the high percentage success rate of it.
“For us, it’s a combination of things (which make it so successful). We’ve been doing it a bit longer, because we’ve been doing it longer we’ve probably seen the things we’ve got wrong more than other teams have which obviously means you can analyse it and work out what you did wrong and the things that are successful, and they can all add to your plan around your five-meter attack game and everyone’s roles in it.
“Those lads have practiced it numerous times, their game-intelligence around how to do it, where the space might be and how you might challenge the opposition – they’ve probably had more practice, more reviews, more talks about it.
“It’s probably a time and understanding issue more than anything else that allows us to be successful at it. That’s it. Other teams who have different ways of attacking are slightly better at their attack because it’s more in them, it’s more often trained and played and there’s an understanding and a belief.
“The things you are saying add to the belief in it and belief is huge in sport. If you believe you’re going to get over the try-line, that makes a big difference as well. All of those combination of things has added up over the seasons.”
One man who has been leading the charge on that front for the Chiefs is free-scoring No.8 Sam Simmonds, who along with younger brother Joe, have both passed fit this week having limped out of the Lyon game suffering with cramp.
They both line-up in a home team which shows just two changes to their starting line-up. Both come in the front-row where props Ben Moon and Tomas Francis - impressive off the bench last weekend - replace Alec Hepburn and Harry Williams. Otherwise, the Chiefs remain unchanged, including full-back Stuart Hogg, who is set to make his 50th appearance in the Champions Cup, and winger Tom O’Flaherty, who had to have a number of stitches applied to a nasty head gash.
EXETER CHIEFS SIDE TO FACE LEINSTER RUGBY
15 Stuart Hogg
14 Olly Woodburn
13 Henry Slade
12 Ollie Devoto
11 Tom O’Flaherty
10 Joe Simmonds
9 Jack Maunder
1 Ben Moon
2 Luke Cowan-Dickie
3 Tomas Francis
4 Jonny Gray
5 Jonny Hill
6 Dave Ewers
7 Jacques Vermeulen
8 Sam Simmonds
16 Jack Yeandle
17 Alec Hepburn
18 Harry Williams
19 Sam Skinner
20 Jannes Kirsten
21 Stu Townsend
22 Harvey Skinner
23 Ian Whitten