There’s no team we’d rather beat, says Rob Baxter
PREVIEW…
Saracens v Exeter Chiefs
Today. Kick-off 3pm, StoneX Stadium
Players may have come and gone but the big-game rivalry between Exeter and Saracens, stoked by the latter’s salary cap abuse, still burns brightly, according to Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter.
“I think it may have changed a little bit in so much that some of the players who appeared in those finals and in those games aren’t here now,” said Baxter.
“But if you say, is there still a rivalry? I would say, 100 per cent there is.
A different feeling
“I think if you asked Saracens honestly and said, ‘would you love to beat Exeter at the weekend’? I think the answer would probably be, ‘it is no different to any other Premiership game’. But the reality is, it is. I think it is, and I think our players think there is.
“Is there a team that we would prefer to beat than Saracens? Probably not. Saracens may not feel like that, that’s entirely up to them.
“But for us, it would be a fantastic result for us to go to Saracens and win. Not just because of past history but because they are top of the Premiership, they are clearly playing very well, they’re looking to have a big season. It’s going to be a big challenge.”
Saracens Threat
Baxter added: “People saw what they did to Sale last weekend. Sale beat them there at the tail-end of last season in a huge game but come the end, although it was a very competitive game for a long period, Saracens did what Saracens do and, in the end, the pressure told and they’ve run out fairly comfortable winners against a good Sale side.”
While Saracens sat top of the table at the end of round two, the Chiefs found themselves second from bottom.
Exeter head to north London having been beaten narrowly in their first two matches against Leicester (14-17) and Northampton (30-24), and Baxter acknowledges that the StoneX isn’t the easiest place to go to when you’re trying to avoid creating an unwanted bit of history.
No time to panic
Never in their 14 years in English rugby’s top flight have Exeter kicked off the season with three straight defeats.
However, Baxter says there is no sense of panic and that had things turned out slightly differently against Leicester, they’d be more than satisfied with their start to the season.
“You’d say the game where we’d slipped on par, if you are talking in golf terms, is the Leicester home game. We lost that in the last play of the game in odd circumstances.
“We should have been in better control but there was a whole lot of weird stuff going on at the end of the game.
“A Leicester player has his hand in touch, who is carrying the ball, and that gets missed, and there is a player on the field who shouldn’t be on the field because he was supposed to have been removed with an HIA situation.
Taking the positives
“We contrived to put a lot of pressure on ourselves but when you actually look at it that way around, we’ve slipped up in the home game, but we’ve picked up a point away from home at Northampton.
“We are very close to what you would call a par start to the season: a home win and a bonus point loss at, let’s not forget, last year’s champions.
“We now face one of last year’s top four in Saracens away from home.
“Losing is not going to define our season by any means but I also understand it creates a little bit of pressure.
“The pressure it puts on us going to Saracens and not getting anything is the week after when we host Bristol at home, it puts pressure on that game. That’s the reality that we are going to have to deal with.
“But right here and now I am actually pretty comfortable with how we are playing. I know that might surprise a few people but as I say, the Leicester game was in some ways was a bit of an anomaly, although we have got to take responsibility for not winning it. But outside of that, I actually think we are ticking along okay at this stage of the season.
“We’ve had weirder patches than this, of over three or four weeks, where I have looked and thought we are not playing well and we have had to shake things up to try and get out of it, and it is not like that at all.”
Teams
SARACENS: Daly; Elliott, Lozowski, Tompkins, Segun; Burke, van Zyl (c); Carre, George, Riccioni, Isiekwe, Tizard, McFarland, Earl, Willis
Replacements: Dan, Mawi, Hoskins, Onyeama-Christie, Gonzalez, Knight, Bracken, Goode
EXETER CHIEFS: Hodge; Feyi-Waboso, Woodburn, Hawkins, Hammersley; Haydon-Wood, Maunder; Goodrick-Clarke, Yeandle (c), Street, Dunne, Tshiunza, Roots, Capstick, Fisilau
Replacements: Innard, Blose, Iosefa-Scott, Tuima, Moloney, Cairns, Skinner, Rigg
Referee: Karl Dickson
