What Exeter want Joe Simmonds to 'really buy into' after form dip

How typical. No sooner had Joe Simmonds managed to get his hands back on the treasured No10 jersey at Exeter did another curveball arrive. He’d just emerged from a curious start to the new Gallagher Premiership season, three consecutive starts in the unfamiliar full-back position followed by a day on the bench. Then came his first selection since last June as his team’s starting out-half and he was excellent, pulling the strings as Bristol were hammered in their own Ashton Gate backyard.

It meant that this weekend should have been a welcome sort of homecoming, Simmonds running onto Sandy Park with the No10 fitting snugly on his back just like old times. Except that grand plan was dramatically scuppered in midweek.

Wasps cancelled due to the financial crisis that now has them suspended from the league and the emergency friendly that the Chiefs hosted instead against Bristol was a glorified second-team runaround with rookie Will Becconsall named at out-half.

It’s back to the drawing board then for Simmonds at training to ensure he gets the nod to start in the Exeter position he most wants next weekend when Saracens are due in Devon, the sort of big, big game he will want to impress in to show to everyone that the player who lit up England and beyond two years ago hasn’t gone away.

It was this week two years ago when Simmonds revelled in the time of his life, skippering Exeter to Champions Cup glory versus Racing in Bristol and then doing likewise the following Saturday in the delayed 2019/20 Premiership final against Wasps at Twickenham. Oh, and there was also an MBE awarded to him.

An unsettling dip in form followed – something that the 25-year-old candidly referenced when interviewed last March by RugbyPass. “It probably hasn’t been the season I expected,” he volunteered. “I probably put too much pressure on myself coming into the start of the season and I wasn’t performing how I know I should be. I thought it was the right call for the coaches to bench me because I wasn’t performing, I wasn’t in the right headspace to lead the team and definitely having the experience of that has pushed me on. I never want to experience it again so making sure to perform week in and week out is huge.”

Seven months later we asked the Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter how he feels Simmonds is doing following an opening to a campaign where he has been 15, 15, 15, 22 and then No10 after pre-season ended with him playing a friendly at Cornish Pirates on the same weekend most of the main Exeter squad went to Ulster.

“He is going fine,” said the DoR. “Last year was a very important year for Joe, very important. It didn’t all go right and all of a sudden not everything he hits isn’t going straight through the posts and not everything in his game actually happens and sometimes those can be the making of people.

“Right now Harvey Skinner deserves to be selected when we select him because he is playing very well and he had taken charge of some very important areas for us, but Joe is now kicking exceptionally well. When he played at Bristol last week he did very, very well. His bit of mojo was there and everyone was seeing it and that is my job, to keep pushing that forward, to keep that confidence in what he is doing and using it in the best way that he gets time on the field.

“Without a doubt, he is a very good 15. I have got no qualms and never have done about just getting our best combination backs on the field. If anything it is something we probably drifted away from a little bit and we have to make sure we keep introducing it again because it has been one of our formulas for success, just making sure we get the right players on the pitch as often as we can.

“Stuart (Hogg) is going to have a period of being unavailable coming up now with the autumn internationals. We are going to have Josh Hodge back fit as well which gives us another great option at full-back. As far as I’m concerned we have got a number of quality backs who are playing well and we are going to keep fitting them into the team where we feel it is right and on a whole, we are going to just keep Joe on an upward trajectory.”

What was Baxter’s new-season message for Simmonds? “I don’t think necessarily hard times make a player. They can and then it is up to that guy to come through. I can’t tell you how our season is going to go but I can tell you what it feels like within the dressing room, within the environment, and at the moment it feels like we have started a little bit of a new journey and that has been the important thing for Joe.

“He has just got to start a new journey. What happened, happened. Last season happened. Let’s just start writing a new journey for him. Yes, there were those great times (before that) but he has got to kind of leave them behind now and write a new story for himself. That is what we are trying to do as a club and that is what he needs to do. If he really buys into that he doesn’t need to worry about last season.”