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Rob Baxter's coded warning for Sale Sharks

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Sale Sharks have been warned that trips to the AJ Bell Stadium bring out the best in Exeter Chiefs as the English rivals step-up their pursuit of a Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final.

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The Gallagher Premiership title contenders clash on Sunday with the Chiefs travelling north as the nation’s standard bearers in the competition after posting bonus-point wins against La Rochelle and Glasgow.

Sale lost their Pool Two opener against the Warriors but will be confident of putting a dent in Exeter’s knockout ambitions – despite the Chiefs’ director of rugby Rob Baxter sounding a note of defiance.

“It’s often a place that brings the best out of us. We’ve had some tough games up there, ones that we’ve won and others that we’ve lost,” Baxter said.

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“But when I think of those games that we’ve won, a lot of our success has come from the attitude and the desire – particularly in defence – that we’ve been able to show.

“Sale are a good, attacking side and they have an ability to come at you in a variety of different ways.

“They can score tries which a lot of other teams cannot do, so it’s going to be down to us to make sure we have our defensive systems in place from the off.

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“It’ll be a great challenge, as it always is when you go to Sale, but we’ve been there before and we’ve won there before.

“With the excitement of it being a Heineken Cup game, I’d like to see us go there and put in one of those big Exeter Chiefs-type performances.”

Even in round three Gloucester’s showdown with Connacht has the look of a dead rubber, while Pool Five’s other two teams Toulouse and Montpellier battle it out for top spot.

Press Association

Former England captain has revealed what it was like to captain the team under Eddie Jones.

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J
JW 53 minutes ago
'They smelt it': Scott Robertson says Italy sensed All Blacks' vulnerability

Even the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.


IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.


Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.


They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.


Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.


This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.

How long are we going to keep blaming All Black failings on Ian Foster.

I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉

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