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How swiftly the sporting wheel can turn. Less than five years ago Exeter were the Double-winning darlings of English club rugby, their fairytale rise ranking alongside Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen and Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang as the most romantic success stories in British team sport.
And now? Second bottom of the Premiership table, 79 points conceded at Gloucester last time out, coaches being summarily jettisoned, the chairman storming into the dressing room. The one thing everyone in Devon can agree on is that the season’s end cannot come quickly enough.
In common with every English club, times have also been tough off the field. Exeter’s conference and banqueting operation was seriously affected when Covid struck. The new hotel at Sandy Park, originally meant to supply the rugby club with another profitable income stream, is now predominantly owned by Tony Rowe, the chair and chief executive. There has been increasing local disquiet about everything from results to ticket prices and the club’s future.
It all adds extra resonance to this Sunday’s penultimate home league fixture against this year’s Champions Cup finalists, Northampton. Any repeat of the Kingsholm calamity will invite further scrutiny given Chiefs have now officially had three different head coaches – Ali Hepher, Rob Hunter and now the returning Rob Baxter – in as many months. The blueprint for next season is for the former England fly-half Dave Walder to work with Baxter, supported by current assistant coaches Haydn Thomas, Ross McMillan and Ricky Pellow.
Rowe’s view is that a revival will duly follow. “There’s no doubt that Rob is a very good coach. When he brought the lads up from the Championship they’d have walked on broken glass for him.”
He has specifically told Baxter to concentrate on the team, rather than the wider remit the pair had previously agreed. “I need to take some of the responsibility. After we won the Double, I said I’d like him to step back a little bit and oversee everything. The problem is it hasn’t really worked. I’ve said to Rob: ‘You’ve got to go back to the coalface, mate.’ I don’t think Rob has been close enough to the lads.”
Photograph: Bob Bradford/CameraSport/Getty Images
The club is certainly desperate to leave behind the Gloucester debacle, though Rowe is keen to clarify that his finger-wagging post-match address to the players, captured on live television, was not quite the furious rant it seemed. “I just said to them: ‘I am absolutely embarrassed, guys. And I hope you all are when you pick up your wages next week. A lot of people have bust their arse over the last four years to keep this club alive so be embarrassed.’ And then I walked out.’ I didn’t give them a bollocking.”
The repercussions, though, were brutal. The next day the experienced Hunter and Hepher were suspended, with Hunter’s permanent departure confirmed last Friday. Insiders described the way the cull was handled as “eye-opening” and at least one of the pair is understood to have “very strong feelings” about what took place.
The Guardian also understands that the players were enjoying the training ground vibe during Hunter’s brief spell as nominal head coach. This summer, though, will not be for the faint-hearted. “Rob and I have chatted and I don’t think the guys are being challenged as they could be,” says Rowe. “Rob will change that. I know the way Rob coaches. He will set them very high standards I don’t think they’ve been set. He’s quite a taskmaster.”
Maybe so but the wider reality is that Exeter, as with so many clubs, have encountered a perfect storm. The financial implications of Covid forced them to release almost all their Double-winning players, leaving behind a collection of promising but callow youngsters in key positions. Others have more cash and stronger squads.
Rowe also now concedes Baxter will have to rectify one or two strategic errors. “He wants to get the club back up where it should be and not make the same mistakes we’ve made before. We didn’t quite have a succession plan, did we? Once we had a clearout and we looked in the cupboard, it was bare.”
In their heyday the Chiefs were fitter and better drilled than most teams and their powerful driving maul was unstoppable from close range. That has all changed courtesy of a 2021 law tweak around pre-latching and the introduction of goalline drop-outs, which allow hard-pressed defending teams more respite.
But as a revitalised Gloucester have shown this season, it is possible to bounce back rapidly with a smart tactical rethink and some fresh coaching input. Rowe, now 76, is not about to walk away – “I’m nowhere near that” – though he will miss this weekend’s match because he is flying to China to compete in a 15,000km endurance car rally from Beijing to Paris. He is hopeful the club will break even next season.
“Commercially, which is my part of the ship, I was a bit concerned. But we’ll finish this season having had more people through the gates than we’ve had in the last five years. We’re still not back in profit but that’s because of outside factors we’re still grappling with.
“I’ve not got donor fatigue. Some supporters are fickle but we’ve got some great signings and good experience coming in. I think we’ve got a more talented bunch of lads now than we had back in 2014-15 when we were building the last team. We just need to get the right coaching skills around them and move forward.”
