England centre Henry Slade has signed a new contract at Exeter Chiefs, extending his stay at the club into at least a 13th season.
Slade made his debut in 2012 having played for Plymouth Albion the season before and earned his first Premiership run out in the following year, winning the U20s Six Nations with England in both years and the U20s World Cup in the latter.
The 31-year-old has since amassed 230 appearances for his club and gone on to play at two World Cups for the England senior side, winning 62 caps and two Six Nations titles since his debut in 2015.
Slade is top of the Premiership point-scoring charts and his kicking off the tee and attacking quality has been instrumental in guiding Exeter’s young team to the verge of a return to the Premiership play-offs for the first time since 2021.
“There were a lot of factors behind my decision to stay at Exeter Chiefs,” he said.
“I joined the academy at 18, so the club is all I have ever really known as a professional rugby player. I feel very lucky to be able to say I have represented the club over 200 times.
“I call Exeter my home. I’ve started a young family here – my eldest daughter starts school in September – so it just felt right to stay.
“The club has been my whole adult life, so I just didn’t feel like it was time to go.
“There is an extremely strong group coming through now, and I am relishing being one of the senior boys in among a group with so much potential to do some great things.
“Wanting to see what I could achieve with a new group did serve as a bit of a refreshener, as it posed a new challenge.
“I have been here for 12 years with a lot of the same faces, and it felt like a very different club this year. Coming into pre-season, it was an exciting challenge.”
There was an expectation that Slade would follow Jack Nowell, Harry Williams, Luke Cowan-Dickie and the Simmonds brothers, Sam and Joe, who had all left the club in 2023 having come through during Chiefs’ early days in the Premiership.
But after being a shock omission from the 2023 World Cup squad Slade has made a return to England and become a key player once again for his country, as well as holding up a critical role for his club.
With his form perhaps the best of his career, and Exeter’s young and much-changed squad superseding expectations in an excellent season, the positive working relationship is will continue for Slade and director of rugby Rob Baxter.
“We obviously feel that we have got a team that is really going to grow over the coming seasons, but the truth is Henry is probably the key-stone to the process,” Baxter said on the club’s website.
“For us, he has been an important player for years. He has been fantastic this season in working very hard himself and setting such high standards for himself.
“He has been a great leader for us and guided a strong, youthful team to do well in both Europe and the Premiership.
“The way he has trained and played, I can still see him being a real force both internationally and at club level for quite some time yet.”
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