Tears for Baxter after title success

By Nigel Walrond
27/5/17

Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter was quite emotional on the pitch as the Devon side lifted the Premiership title for the first time.

The man who has plotted the Chiefs’ amazing climb to the top said the tears were caused partly by thinking about all those people who had helped get the Chiefs to where they are now over the past few years.

"My wife Jo and family were here, and they have probably taken the brunt of what you go through day by day," he said. "The players have been very strong, and for a long time at Exeter, there are lots of things that have not gone our way, and we have worked very, very hard to make this happen.

"It has not just been this group of players. There have been plenty of other players who have pulled on the Exeter shirt and worked very hard and committed an awful lot to the club, and every one of them has played their little part in building us to be the kind of side we have.

‘There are obviously particular players who helped us get promoted and helped us stay in the Premiership in those first few years and get established within the Premiership and within the Heineken Cup.

‘They are very important people, and for me, I have worked a lot with those players, and some of those have had to leave as we have moved on as a side, and there are a lot of players who are massively involved with this team and this club who are not here, who don’t get the reward of today.

"There are also a lot of coaches and a lot of other people who are massively emotionally involved in what we achieved today, and no-ne even knows about them.

"I know about them and I feel a lot for them and feel a lot for the things we have gone through, and to a degree, it came to a bit of a head in the last few minutes of the game.

"It does feel it has been a long journey getting here, because the people who have lived and breathed it every day, know how hard we have worked, and the sacrifices that have been made, and the hard times we have come through and the losses, including the biggest loss we have had, which was last season here at Twickenham.’

The fact Exeter lifted the trophy is quite incredible when you bear in mind how Exeter struggled at the start of the season, and seemed to be suffering a hangover from that Twickenham disappointment.

"We did need to have a stiff word with ourselves after a few weeks of this season, and it is easy to do that, but you need the people with character to take it on board and work every day and decide to do something,’ explained Baxter.

"The truth about today is Exeter had a group of players who were prepared to listen to me and the other coaches tell them that what they were doing wasn’t good enough, and they were prepared to take it on the chin and work harder and do more, and take the season into their own hands.

"Since the day they decided to take it into their own hands, the players have been magnificent.

"You haven’t seen some of the stuff they have gone through in training, they have been magnificent and they have reaped the rewards today.’

Baxter said the goal was now to win the European Champions Cup.

"We have to look at it that way now,’ said Baxter. ‘I am not going to run away from saying we are the best team in the Premiership. We finished level on points in the table with Wasps, we finished first and second in the table and we have battled it out today until the players were at an absolute standstill, and we have been split by three points.

"As great as today is, it can’t be the defining thing about Exeter. If this is it now, and we are now on a nice downward spiral, I will be hugely disappointed and I will have massively failed in a large part of my job.
"We have got to where we are now and we will enjoy today to the max, but the truth is we need to put a group of players together this close season who are going to say I am going to do something about the fact we are now the Premiership champions and do something to make sure it stays that way.

"Part of that will be us playing and performing better in Europe. We have let ourselves down in Europe over the last couple of seasons with our performances in the first round. It should be a marker for us, and we don’t want that to happen again."