Rob Baxter
More than fifty years ago, Rob Baxter was introduced to Exeter rugby. A life spent with the club, as man and ball boy, shows no sign of coming to an end. Even though his first golden generation are almost entirely gone, a new breed have emerged.
When Steve Borthwick visited Sandy Park for a catch-up with Exeter Chiefs’ director of rugby, Rob Baxter, one of the questions he asked was how long he’d been at the club. “He said, ‘how old was I when I first walked in?’,” says Rob, retelling the story to Rugby Journal in the club’s boardroom. “I said, ‘I didn’t walk into the club, I was carried in as a baby’. It was when my dad was playing, so over fifty years ago.” Too young to remember his dad John play, he does however vaguely recall his uncle playing at the County Ground. It was at that ground, Exeter’s home since the 1800s, where those early rugby memories played out: running around the speedway track that encircled the pitch with his mates, long after the first team’s match had finished and the floodlights had been turned off.
He followed the perfect rugby path, ball boy to player, to captain, to coach and now, in the modern professional era, director of rugby, although by the time he’d earned the final job title, he was at Sandy Park, not the County Ground.
After the ball boy years, he started playing for the club as a colt in 1987 and ended up captaining the first team for a decade. Broken only by a single season at Gloucester, he amassed three hundred appearances at lock, just a century or so shy of his brother Richie’s 431. The last of Rob’s games came in 2005, a 41-33 win over Rotherham, in what is now the Championship, but was then National One. Chiefs had finished second to Bristol Shoguns, although ahead of local rivals Plymouth Albion and Penzance & Newlyn, in third and fourth.
Ian Bremner, then director of rugby, had made Exeter a force, not just locally but in the second tier. It was remarkable given that, during Rob’s own career, local rivalry had been everything. “Devon Cup games were actually bigger than league games,” he says. “When the league started, you played home or away, it was only about ten games: it didn’t mean much compared to a friendly list that was huge, with Bristol, Gloucester, Saracens, and then [cup matches against] local rivals.
“And that local rivalry was real too,” he adds. “Those games could definitely be lost. There was a long period when either ourselves or Plymouth Albion pretty much won it [the Devon Cup] every year, but there were plenty of years when we had an upset – I remember when we lost to Okehampton; those results did happen.”
In the era of professionalism, both Plymouth Albion and Penzance & Newlyn blinked first, with the former putting together one of the best sides the Championship has ever seen under Graham Dawe, and the latter climbing the leagues to stay on the coat-tails of the Premiership. Exeter managed to leapfrog them both. “I think we took some good decisions at the right time,” he says. “I think the thing that people don’t often remember correctly about professional rugby is that the best decision at the time was probably just to go professional, but not to do too much.
“There’s not many success stories there,” he continues. “We ended up being a success story because we didn’t chase it straightaway. We had loads of opportunities to sell the County Ground before and move into facilities that would never have supported Premiership rugby.” Instead, timing proved impeccable. “Professional rugby happened when we were in the third division, and we built a good team and got promoted,” explains Rob. “In that first year in the, we probably should have got relegated but they restructured the league [which saved us].”
Bremner’s arrival in 1998 made all the difference. “He just added a layer of professionalism that meant we never looked like we could have got relegated,” says Rob. “He identified two or three key positions where we needed players, and h then we had quite a few seasons where we were towards the top end.”
During this time, Rob balanced being a full-time farmer on the family plot – three hundred acres with cattle and sheep – with rugby. “When I first started, we were getting paid as a semi-professional players, and we basically got a match appearance fee, that was it, but Ian almost squeezed professional training out of us,” explains Rob. “We’d have a couple of mornings in the gym at six o’clock, a track session on a Monday night and then rugby training on Tuesday and Thursday. But he created an atmosphere where you didn’t want to miss out, so most people did turn up.”
Even though he had a full-time job, the extra cash came in handy. “I know people like to talk about wealthy farmers,” he laughs. “But you know, when you’ve got a small farm in Devon, Mum and Dad had to make a living out of it, and I did too for my wife and kids, so [the money from] rugby was helpful.”
The season after he retired from playing, Rob was coaching Exeter University when Bremner was sacked after four league defeats, despite the fact the club had finished second the season before. When Bremner’s eight-year tenure was brought to an end, the club temporarily turned to Rob. “I had two interim periods as head coach at Exeter,” he says. “And the first thing I did in the first one was to bring in three or four Exeter University players, who had also been playing a bit at the club.“Even back then I think it was underestimated how good some of those young players were. We became the first team that year in the Championship to go down to Truro [home of Cornish Pirates] and beat them [16-23, having lost 16-43 at home] and we were the only team that year that beat Harlequins [13-8 in front of 3,645 at the County Ground].”
Of course, Rob was only a temporary fix, and former England under-21 coach Pete Drewett was brought in, although he was sacked after three seasons of failing to win promotion. This time Rob was already in the set-up as forwards coach. “I was doing a lot of analysis, I got into that at Exeter University,” he says. “I still do our individual analysis now because I think that’s the bit of power that keeps you right on the pulse of the team. That was a defining thing for me back then too.
“I know people like to talk about wealthy farmers. But Mum and Dad had to make a living out of it, and I did too for my wife and kids, so [the money from] rugby was helpful.”
“One of the things I did just before I took over from Pete was my level four coaching and I took it really seriously,” he continues. “There were a few questions in there that made me stop and think. One of them was about KPIs [key performance indicators] and planning, and I started to think about how we did so much analysis on the opposition but not really enough on ourselves. So, in the off season, I went through every game that we had played in the Championship. I did the individual coding for players, I looked at various things, and suddenly so many shapes and styles came out that I just think we hadn’t noticed.
“They looked like relatively simple [problems] for us to deal with,” he says. “I could see where we had some weaknesses and where we had some strengths. And that in a way, I suppose, coincided with me accidentally moving into the top job.”
Appointed at the tail-end of the 2008/09 campaign, he put his analysis into practise for his first full season. He targeted scrum-half [former player Haydn Thomas], backrow [Bath’s James Scaysbrook] and full-back as key positions for recruitment. “We had three full-backs on our books, but we didn’t have a defined starter so we went and got Phil Dolman: he was actually the first player I signed.”
Ali Hepher also arrived from Northampton Saints, where he’d been working with the academy. “We made a decision amongst ourselves that we would never just focus all our energy on how you beat the opposition,” he says. “We’d focus on how we could get better, and then do a little bit on the opposition.” He won promotion in his first season, the start of a steady upward climb that would see them finish eighth in their first Premiership season, fifth in their second, then runner-up within five campaigns. A first title was secured the season after, beating Wasps 23-20 in front of a packed Twickenham.
A double followed three years later, Wasps again the victims in the Premiership final [19-13] with Racing 92 defeated 31-27 in the Champions Cup final. “It was really weird when everyone was saying ‘does it feel like a dream to be European champions?’” says Rob. “I’d say, ‘well, I’m pleased, but it doesn’t feel like a dream’,” he continues. “Because to get into a European final, you have to first spend years practising doing well in Europe. Then, in a good season, you might get to quarter-final but get knocked out, as we did with Wasps and that last-minute kick from Jimmy Gopperth on the touchline [in the 25-24 defeat in 2016].
“So, when you then win a quarter-final, it doesn’t feel like a massive step because you’ve already come so close.”
You can just about follow the logic, but in short, the theme is that Exeter have been on a gradual journey: cautious with their finances in reaching the top, and then gradually picking off the big dogs of rugby, before eventually become a big dog themselves.
In the boardroom there’s a picture of England and Exeter’s golden generation. Henry Slade, Jack Nowell, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Sam Hill (plus Joel Conlon, who played the year later) in the white under-20 shirts they wore to secure England’s first Junior World Championship crown in 2013, defeating Wales 23-15 in the final. The scorers? Tries: Nowell and Hill. Cons: Slade (3). Pens: Slade (2).
All four from 2013 would go on to play key roles in the club’s golden era. “That’s the group everyone talks about,” admits Rob, nodding to the picture on the wall, “but actually I think people misunderstand how that group grew, a couple of years before and after. Dave Ewers is a year older than that group but perhaps came in a little behind those guys; Sam Simmonds isn’t much younger than those guys; Joe was a bit younger; then there was Stu Townsend, Jack Maunder … if you look at the squad that did the double, that was five or six year-groups.”
Now, though, many have left. Both Simmonds brothers, Nowell, Cowan-Dickie, Ewers, Hills [Sam and Jonny], Harry Williams: a huge chunk of experience has left the building in recent seasons. The salary cap reduction imposed as a result of Covid has taken its toll; £6.4m down to £5m means sacrifices have to be made, especially to a double-winning squad full of international, Lions-class players. “It was a very weird situation when you
actually look at it,” says Rob, taking us back three years to the Premiership vote
for cuts. “I still kind of laugh about it because it is a bit typical Premiership Rugby with that kind muddled thinking.
“So Covid happens,” he begins, “and everyone realises there’s going to be financial pressures, so the cap’s going to get reduced to £5m for three years, then it’s going back to £6.4. Not every club voted for it, but enough did for it to go through. Then it turns out that, of course, every club’s got different players under different contract lengths. ‘Are we going to cancel contracts with players?’ ‘Oh no, we can’t do that’. “So they said, ‘if you’ve got a contracted player, then that player’s salary contributes to 75 per cent of the cap’. The clubs were all, ‘well, hold on a minute, that’s not fair’.” With 25 per cent of contracted players’ salaries discounted, clubs with big-money stars on long-term contracts were set to benefit enormously, leaving those with their stars on short-term contracts in their wake.
“Then there was a ten-day melee when nearly every club re-signed their players [on longer contracts], which basically meant no club was working at £5m. They might as well have said, ‘spend as you feel you should spend’, because ultimately, that’s what happened over that two-year period.”
Ten days were spent in his conservatory, with a table full of contracts. “It was literally like a 24-hour hotline on your phone, trying to get those contracts done within ten days. I was then meeting players one at a time out in the car park because of the Covid restrictions.”
Everyone they needed was secured, and even the Covid break hadn’t altered their mindsets.“The lads went away, and it was almost quite exciting for them to train on their own and challenge each other,” says Rob. “There were WhatsApp groups going around with videos, all about who was training the hardest, who would create the best home gym, who was lifting the most, who was running the quickest, who was running the farthest. When they came together, they actually had a really good foundation of fitness, and it just took off. We flew through the games [in the 2020/21 season], even when it was midweek games and we had to completely change the team, we just never lost.”
On top of the double came another Premiership final place – but lost 40-38 to Harlequins – and then the band began to break up. “The reality is, as every guy came off contract, we had to fit them in the £5m cap,” says Rob. “There was no way they could stay on anything like a similar wage under the new cap.”
Exeter Chiefs had built title winners, internationals and Lions, their market value was through the roof. “I knew that was going to happen, there’s no point fighting it,” he says. “These were still guys who had been considered as top players in the sport, and they’re always going to get offered more money than we could offer. People don’t understand, because they say, ‘well, all other clubs have done it’, but if you target one player, you can make space for one [marquee] player. But if you’ve got seven or eight, and seven or eight clubs are targeting your players, you can’t match that.”
It wasn’t just about salaries either, as many players were reaching their late 20s and early 30s. “A lot of the conversations didn’t even come down to money,” he says. “You need to remember some of these guys wanted an experience that’s not just at Exeter. The majority of the lads who’ve left have spent all their time at Exeter. They wanted new experiences, they’re now married, they have kids too [to consider].
“It was different with Joe [Simmonds], he felt he just got a little flat,” admits Rob. “He wanted a new experience and you can’t say ‘you’re wrong’, because we probably all had had a couple of seasons where we felt a bit flat.”
Narratives get twisted, especially in the social media age. “What was a little annoying at the time was the press. It was always intimated that there had to be a problem,” says Rob. “There was never a problem other than life, just real life. They weren’t screaming and shouting and falling out, we weren’t having arguments.”
Was it sad to see them go? “A little bit yeah,” says Rob. “But at the same time, there was a lot of satisfaction in it because we hadn’t just built that team in a season; that team had been built literally over ten years.”
And so we have a new crop, or rather generation, at Exeter Chiefs. The week before we meet Rob, a defeat to Northampton Saints had seen almost half the matchday squad made up from homegrown players (from different generations, obviously). Shorn of big names, including Stuart Hogg, who decided to retire, Exeter Chiefs are finding their feet again, challenging at the right end of the table with the same kind of vigour that we saw when Nowell, Slade et al. were breaking through. “When people say, ‘is this Exeter 2.0?’, I think that’s ridiculous,” says Rob. “Because the team that won the Premiership wasn’t the team that got promoted. In reality, it was probably a third-generation team, because even the team that got to our first final wasn’t just one group of players, there was probably a fair change up compared to the side in our last final.”
There are many reasons for Exeter’s failure to challenge in recent years, including never being given time to rebuild. “One of the tough things for us as a club was when no relegation came in,” says Rob, giving an interesting reason in favour of promotion/relegation. “Because it took the pressure off a few teams and allowed them a free rebuild. Don’t get me wrong, this is not me being bitter, but it allowed huge turnover of numbers and huge opportunity to blood new players.
“Leicester are a perfect example,” he says, “quite happy to finish bottom of the Premiership, when rebuilding a team. They wouldn’t have been happy to be doing that in different circumstances; they wouldn’t have been allowed to rebuild at the scale it happened at Leicester if they were at risk of going into the Championship.”
With four decades of skin in the rugby game, Rob knows his beloved Exeter aren’t immune to the financial challenges that have seen the demise of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish. “It impacts all of us,” he says. “There isn’t a club in the Premiership that is going to see the financial picture as rosy, but every club is made differently. We’re a members’ club here, so we actually have to try to make a profit, or at least not make a loss. That’s a lot harder now with significant loans, debts that we’ve built up through Covid, so that picture isn’t fantastic.
“The reality is, as every guy came off contract, we had to fit them in the £5m cap, there was no way they could stay on anything like a similar wage under the new cap.”
“Obviously, others have wealthier owners that can take the pressure off them,” he continues, “but we’ve got to strive very hard if we want the golden ticket, which is crowd numbers. If we can get really healthy crowd numbers through the gate again, we will be a very healthy business.”
On the pitch, Exeter’s home form proves they can challenge with the best. “If we’d just converted a few of those away games [last season], we’d have made the play-offs,” reflects Rob. Off the pitch, he believes rugby can be its own worst enemy. “I’m continually baffled by this desire to keep tinkering and adapting and changing,” he says. “It feels like it doesn’t need much to happen in our sport before you want to change it. “Football, for years and years and years, has made success by tinkering as little as possible,” he continues. “And look at what the biggest talking point in football is now. VAR: they brought it in and they hate it, and they suddenly ask, ‘why’ve we done this is, is this improving our game?’.
“We seem to thrive on talking about TV match officials, decision-making processes, and we can’t get away from it,” explains Rob. “We’re not even trying to get away from it, we don’t even want to get away.”
Too much focus on the intricacies of decision-making has made the game stutter. “How good was Prem Cup without TMOs?” he says. “I’m not criticising TMOs, it’s not that they’re doing a bad job. The trouble is you make one bad mistake, and that’s what everyone looks at. Why can’t we just get on with things? If we want to bring more supporters, they don’t want long stoppages. If there’s a bit of jeopardy in the game, if a referee makes the wrong call, he makes the wrong call, so be it.”
Rugby’s ability to hit the headlines seems to be fuelled entirely by negativity. “The head injury process was probably something we had to go through,” he says. “But we’ve gone through it now, we need to come out of it pretty quickly. The argument of it being rugby’s job to protect the players is false now, because the players know. The players aren’t ignorant to the dangers of concussion or head injury, so let them have a say in what should be refereed as a yellow or red card.
“Because,” he adds, “I know for a fact 95 per cent of them don’t want anything that’s a rugby-type incident to be a red card. They know the dangers, that’s not me as a coach being fed up with red cards, that’s your players not wanting games to keep going down to fourteen or thirteen men. We are one of the sports where our only sanction is to get guys off the pitch. It doesn’t create better games, it creates one-sided games, which people don’t want to watch anyway.”
He looks at the recent World Cup as a positive step. “What I thought was good at the World Cup was the refs not really throwing cards around; they kind of went, ‘I think that’s a rugby incident’. We don’t just want to tinker, tinker, tinker, because on the whole we have a really good sport.”
Positive voices are becoming few and far between. “We’ve become very negative about rugby, that really bothers me,” believes Rob. “It was so difficult to actually see anybody talk positively about what England had achieved at the World Cup. We need to be talking positively about England, we need to talk about the Premiership, we need to be talking positively about what the clubs are creating. And yet even TV commentators find it hard to talk positively about a game of rugby they’re watching.
“Even when it’s a good game, they spend more time talking about things the referees missed, or things that weren’t right, or why is a scrum being reset again. We need to find a few people who love the sport.”
A handful of gripes aside, Rob is ultimately in a good place. “I’ve had conversations with my wife about the future,” he says, “but I actually have to admit, the really, really nice thing to do, would be to do it again. At the end of day, I’m only 52 now, so I don’t feel like an old coach.
“Watching young guys go on and pick up a trophy is an incredible feeling, especially when it’s guys you’ve got through some crushing disappointments and some really tough times, and then to have absolute pure joy on their faces when they win something – it’s quite a special feeling.
“This group we have now, they’re working really hard, they look like a pretty tight-knit bunch,” he continues. “They’re all here for slightly different reasons and it’d be really nice to see them succeed.”
Would he ever be tempted by England? “I think with that, it’s a bit never say never,” he says. “This rugby club is very important, but so is my family: there’s lots that goes with it. I think in coaching you can be very caught up with the grass being greener somewhere else, but this is a good rugby club. I know where I stand, and that’s very important in coaching.
“I think the idea of the England job is very interesting,” he adds. “And don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of interesting aspects, but whether it’s the most interesting thing I could think of doing right now, particularly when we’ve got a bit of a rebuild going on here... I certainly wouldn’t want to step away while we get the club back on a footing it needs to be.”
So ingrained in Exeter rugby is Rob that it’s hard to see him ever leaving, and even if he does leave the role of director of rugby, he won’t go far. “One thing I want to make sure I get the chance to do is just enjoy watching the team,” he says. “That’s something that’s really important to me. I really want to be watching in the middle of grandstand with my wife, and have a beer with my mates. Most of my best mates I played with here, they come and watch and it would be nice at some stage to go and sit and watch with them. I’d love to go to Toulon as a supporter, or La Rochelle, how good would that be? I’d love to do that.”
Story by Alex Mead
Pictures by Henry Hunt
This extract was taken from issue 24 of Rugby.
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