Exeter head coach Rob Baxter is in for the long haul, says chairman Tony Rowe
Exeter’s chairman, Tony Rowe, has said he is confident Rob Baxter will remain at the helm “for a long time” and pursue even more trophies as the West Country club look to build on their European Champions Cup success. As the Chiefs seek to secure a double in Saturday’s Premiership final, Rowe believes his director of rugby is in no hurry to move into international coaching, whether England approach him or not.
“Personally I think it will be a long time before he leaves,” said Rowe, who appointed Baxter as his head coach when Exeter were still a Championship side. “Eddie Jones is here until the next World Cup and irrespective of whether they ask Rob or not I still think he will stay here for a while.
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“Rob is a big family man and when you’re doing the job of national coach you’re never home. I don’t think that would suit him. I know what he’s like and I know his family. They’re very close. I’d like him to stay for as long as he likes. Eventually his ambition may be to coach England but when we spoke after Saturday’s game I said: ‘We’ve made it, what are we going to do next?’ He said: ‘We’ll do it again, won’t we?’”
It is also Rowe’s firm opinion that Exeter, having beaten Racing 92 in an eventful final at Ashton Gate, can continue on their upward trajectory for the foreseeable future. “We can achieve even more down at Exeter,” he said. “There’s no reason why we can’t go down in history as the best- ever members club in the world. We’ve got all the ingredients there to do that. I was working out this morning that nearly half our 23 last Saturday came through our academy. We’ve got a lot more to prove.
“I’m always a great believer that there’s no reason to rush anything. You’ve got to have faith in yourself, put the pegs in the ground in terms of where you want to go to, and surround yourself with good people. That’s the key. You have to build slowly and have some solid foundations and then add bits to it as you go.” Exeter, who won their first Premiership title in 2017 by beating Wasps in an extra-time thriller, have now qualified for five consecutive domestic finals.
Rowe, meanwhile, has revealed he was almost forced to miss Exeter’s finest hour after being hospitalised last week prior to the big game in Bristol. “It was a nightmare week. I went in for a minor operation last Monday morning and was supposed to be in and out in a day. In the end I didn’t come out of the operating theatre until 7.30pm on the Friday night and didn’t get out of hospital until 9.30am on the Saturday. Fortunately for us the chief executive of the hospital is a massive Chiefs fan and the head doctor is the head doctor at the rugby club, so I did have a couple of people in high places I could text. Happily I’m feeling better now.”
Like every other rugby club in the country, Exeter is also having to battle the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which will mean no paying fans at Twickenham this weekend. “The biggest problem at the moment is the lack of spectators,” he said. “That’s a massive chunk of our income and that’s why we’re still losing nearly £1m a month. We just need to get a vaccine and move on. It’s destroying sports, not just rugby. The reality is that professional sport needs money and we’re desperate for it in the Premiership.
“We’re being allowed to take the rest of the playing squad with us to Twickenham because, in the Premiership, you don’t just use the same 23 all the time. Apart from that I think they’re allowing 10 people from Exeter and 10 from whichever club we’re going to meet.”
