Rob Baxter hits back on-air at former Exeter star's comments

Exeter Director of Rugby Rob Baxter has responded to criticism from club legend Gareth Steenson that the Chiefs had been stuck in their ways for too long and have been guilty of ‘taking their eye off the ball’.

Asked about the plight of the club that he served for 16 years as player and coach during a Premiership icons interview on TNT Sports, Steenson said: “If you look at the coaching set-up, the coaching set-up has been together for many, many years, and the messages maybe have been similar, the style of rugby they are playing, I would sort of question it, because if you are trying to play the way that we did many years ago, with a heavy pack of forwards, with the group that we have at the minute, it maybe doesn’t bode to the style of game that they are trying to play. They need to find their identity, they need to find what they are about. Being honest, I think they have maybe just taken their eye off the ball a little bit.”

Head coach Rob Hunter and backs and attacks coach Ali Hepher have paid the price for the record 79-17 hammering at the hands of Gloucester a fortnight ago by being moved on, and Baxter has since taken on a more hands-on coaching role, assisted by Ricky Pellow (skills), Haydn Thomas (attack) and Ross McMillan (scrum), while incoming attack and skills coach Dave Walder is also believed to have taken some sessions.

Steenson was a key figure in Exeter’s rise from the Championship to champions of Europe and England, becoming the club’s record points scorer after amassing 2,630 points in 311 appearances between 2008 and 2020. On retiring from playing, he joined the coaching staff. So criticism from someone who was once in the inner sanctum of the club will likely have left Baxter bristling in private.

However, when asked to respond to Steenson’s comments by TNT Sports’ Sarra Elgan in the build-up to today’s Gallagher Premiership dead rubber against Northampton, Baxter struck a measured tone.

“I would say partly right and partly wrong,” was his assessment of what Steenson had to say.

“When you say maybe has the message has been too similar, what I’d say is that I think people have become very focused on how we play – we can’t play how we used to play and did we try and develop how we played in the right way or the wrong way – and there is a lot of how, how, how. I keep hearing it all the time. The reality is what we haven’t got right here and right now – and it’s what we did have in spades for a long time, and Gareth was part of that, so he will understand this if I spoke to him properly or he was questioned in this way – is our ‘why’, I don’t think it is what it used to be.

“I think game plans are different in every team in the Premiership. What the successful teams are doing is that every player knows why they are doing it, and why the person next to them is doing it, and why it is important to them, and why their role in things is important.”

Club chairman Tony Rowe blamed a disconnect between the coaches and staff for a season that has fallen well short of expectations and hit a new low at Kingsholm.

And this was another aspect of the inner workings of the Chiefs that Baxter addressed in his pitchside interview.

“I didn’t necessarily think it’s from one layer of the club to another, I think it’s between each individual person within it. I think the message has not been similar enough. I think that part was our biggest strength as a club. We used to get guys aligned to play however we asked them to play. For a period, it was very similar and we had great success,” he said.

“Where we are now, we are trying to play slightly differently, but I don’t think we’re aligned to the level we need to be to be really successful. That’s my big drive at the moment, that’s the thing I am spending more time on.

“We’re not going to suddenly try and change how we play massively in three weeks but we can start to make big changes on why we’re doing it, and why we are doing it for each other and what success feels like and what our expectations of each other are, I think that’s the big thing we can change quite quickly.”