Chiefs side to face Saints

The Saints, meanwhile, have not featured at this phase since 2014, ironically the year they won the competition with an extra-time victory over Saracens.

But as he readies his troops for their latest battle, Chiefs’ Director of Rugby Baxter has spelt out a clear and defiant message of what he expects from his men when they take to the field tomorrow.

“We’ve made a point of not talking about finals or what’s happened in the past,” said Baxter. “We’ve made a point of talking about Northampton and this weekend, nothing else.

“For all of us, it’s an exciting week. Watching the lads train, the effort they are putting in, the focus they’ve got, it looks as good as any other pre semi-final training week that we’ve had. I look out there and I see we have a good group of fit players, probably our biggest compliment to choose from all season, and there is a real hunger about us.

“Having large numbers like we’ve had, it’s meant we’ve been able to have some very high quality training sessions, so we should have a degree of confidence about us based on that, the season we’ve had, plus the performance we put in last weekend. Now, we have to back up that confidence with a desire to work really hard and put in a big, emotional performance that hopefully will win us the game.”

Standing in the way of the Chiefs, who finished the regular season eight points clear of next-best Saracens, will be a Northampton outfit who, for 40 minutes at least last weekend, put up a considerable threat to Baxter’s side.

The visitors took just two minutes to open their account and by half-time were deadlocked with their hosts at 21-21, this despite losing two of their key forwards to yellow cards. The second half, however, belonged to the Devonians, who not only added 19 further points but, more importantly, kept their rivals scoreless.

The Saints, on the other hand, saw a number of their players forced to go off during the bruising contest and it will be interesting to see who of their personnel report fit for duty tomorrow.

Whoever they pick, Baxter knows his side will have to be on the top of their game. Despite last weekend’s victory, the Chiefs leader says his side can ill afford any kind of complacency within the ranks.

“If you have any kind of complacency, it’s going to hurt you,” added Baxter. “What I’ve seen this week, though, is a group of our players on our part who not only look focused and ready, but who are genuinely excited about playing and delivering a performance in a Premiership semi-final.”

For a number of weeks Baxter has talked about how he has utilised the opening of qualifying for the play-offs in record time to not only get as much game time into a wide range of players, but to ensure his team are in peak condition for this weekend and, hopefully, next weekend as well.

“After we qualified for the play-offs I kind of went through a range of emotions. Initially I was worried that if we dropped off too much we would find it hard to rebuild momentum again. However, actually watching the first week or two of us training, performing and how the lads were actually talking and preparing, I soon realised they were going to be ready to step up.

“Last week’s game against Northampton kind of proved that. Yes they were a little rusty early on, but after that you saw how hard they were willing to work and how they stepped up the intensity levels as the game wore on. In a lot of ways, this is kind of what the last four or five weeks have been about for us. For me, it all bodes well on how we can move into Friday’s training and then the game on Saturday.”