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Exeter outline their plan to stop a Sharks side loaded with Springboks
By PA
Rob Baxter says Exeter are excited to tackle one of the toughest assignments in world rugby on Saturday.
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Baxter’s team have arrived in South Africa after a 24-hour journey from Devon to face the star-studded Sharks following seven successive Gallagher Premiership defeats this season.
While Exeter find themselves propping up the Premiership table two points behind Newcastle, the Sharks are considered major Investec Champions Cup contenders.
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And they will start as overwhelming favourites in Durban, with World Cup-winning Springboks such as Siya Kolisi, Lukhanyo Am and Bongi Mbonambi – among several others – now back on Sharks duty following an unbeaten autumn international campaign.
The Sharks provided more than a third of South Africa’s match-day 23 that recently accounted for England, and Chiefs rugby director Baxter knows exactly what awaits his team.
“They are a very, very good side with world-class individual players that contribute massively to what they are capable of as a team,” Baxter said.
“You look across the pack and then you start looking along the back-line and you kind of go, ‘Blimey’.
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“You have pretty much got to stop them everywhere. We have just got to try and create a game with a movement and tempo that creates an uncomfortable environment for them.
“We are excited by it. We don’t look like we are getting ready to go into our shells. We look like we are getting ready to play some rugby.
“If you can create your patches in a game, it’s funny how sometimes a couple of scores can come very quickly and the whole situation can change.
“We have got to play with a positivity, not play with a fear of what they may do. We have got to try and make the game about us as much as we can.”
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Holders Toulouse, Bordeaux-Begles and Ulster are also on Exeter’s Champions Cup schedule in the pool stage.
And while that appears a fearsome test, they can take heart from last season’s competition that began with victory in Toulon – a game won by Henry Slade’s final-kick conversion – and was then followed by successes against Munster, Glasgow and Bath before Chiefs made a quarter-final exit to Toulouse.
Baxter added: “Because we got the win in Toulon, and the way we did it, it really fired our whole campaign.
“We also beat Glasgow and Munster last season in this competition to progress, and it was definitely that first away win.
“If you are away from home, the pressure that is on you is to get something from the game, and it starts to create a good feeling for the rest of the competition.
“You have got to try and get something from every round, and if we do that it keeps things very interesting for us next week with the visit of Toulouse.”
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