Poole reaping his rewards

“Obviously, the standard is at another level and the way the game is managed as such is different, but I guess the morals and aspirations of both Darlington and the Chiefs is pretty much the same,” he said. “We want to win stuff, we want to be best in the league, and as players you want to do your best every week.

“My first season at Darlington from Yorkshire Carnegie, we finished second that year, only a few points behind Coventry, but we were very competitive and it was really good. It’s the same here, we want to be challenging for honours, we want to be the best we can, and as a group we’re all driving each other on.”

Certainly, it’s been an enjoyable first year in Chiefs colours for the Leeds-born forward, who believes there is still ‘more to come’ from him.

“All I’ve ever aspired to do was to play Premiership Rugby, so to get on the other week [against Sale Sharks] – and again last week [at Gloucester] – it was very special for me,” he added. “These last couple of months have been brilliant and I’ve developed so much. Working under the coaches here at the club, they really helped me, but the good thing is I know I still have more to learn and more to come.”

Poole’s elevation into the first-team ranks is certainly merited, having impressed many during pre-season and then in the opening games of the Premiership Rugby Cup. Since then, he has continued to flourish featuring for the Exeter Braves in the Premiership Rugby Shield, the fruits of which have enabled him to now get the nod for top-flight fixtures.

“As soon as I got here, I had to sit down with the coaches and set out a few long and short-term goals for the season,” he explained. “One of my goals was to try and play in six first-team fixtures across the various competitions, the other was to see if I could earn a Premiership cap so to speak. That last one I thought was probably the hardest one to do, but I was happy to put it out there!

“I knew with Luke [Cowan-Dickie] likely to get called up, plus the fact that the coaches here like to rotate their options, I thought there may be a chance somewhere down the line. All I knew I had to do was train as hard as I could, impress when I did get a chance, and see if good things would come.”

Well, good things do come for people willing to put the effort in and Poole is now reaping his rewards.

“People will say I’ve been lucky in a sense because of injuries that have happened to others, but if the coaches didn’t think I was capable of doing a job, then they wouldn’t have picked me. I take a lot from the fact that they are willing to trust me – and hopefully this is the start of things for me.”

On Sunday, Poole will be part of a powerful Chiefs 23-man squad looking to build on what has been a great campaign to date. As well as topping the Premiership, Devon’s finest have a European Champions Cup quarter-final to prepare for in April, they reached the semi-finals of the Premiership Rugby Cup, and are well positioned in the Premiership Rugby Shield.

“We’ve done a lot of hard work, but now we have crank up the gears a little more,” continued Poole. “We have to keep building, keep performing and get as many points as we can out of these next few games.

“In Europe, we obviously have Northampton again, so the club is in a great position there as well, but we have to keep pushing ourselves, pushing the limits and seeing how far we can really go. There is still so much of the season to go and it’s up to us as players to make sure we go out and deliver each week.”