Hard work starts now says Baxter
Head coach Rob Baxter says he is encouraged by the way his Exeter Chiefs have reported back for pre-season training this week.
Just a handful of weeks after bringing the curtain down on the 2013/14 season - one which brought about a first piece of major silverware for the Devon club - the Chiefs regrouped on Monday for the start of their build-up to the new campaign.
Welcoming back a large nucleus of last season's LV= Cup winning squad, Baxter was also able to parade a selection of his new recruits with Ryan Caldwell, Tomas Francis, Mitch Lees and Thomas Waldrom in attendance for the start of testing at the University of Exeter.
Fellow newcomers Adam Hughes, Moray Low and Elvis Taione are set to hook up with their new team-mates shortly, as will the likes of Dave Ewers, Sam Hill, Tom Johnson, Henry Slade and Fetu'u Vainikolo, all of whom have been involved in international action during the summer months.
With personnel in place, Baxter - together with his fellow coaches - are hard at work piecing together the Chiefs' game plan for the upcoming term, whilst at the same time ensuring the players themselves get in the best possible shape to ensure they hit the new season firing on all cylinders.
Baxter said: “We’ve had our first couple of meetings, the guys tested on Monday and we got out in groups training. It was good weather, the guys looked in good nick but we’ve never had a problem with our players turning up in poor condition, they’re normally very professional during the off-season. There’s a nice mood around the place and you couldn’t ask for much better than to be running around playing rugby on a nice day.
“We haven’t got everyone here because we’ve got guys like Fets, TJ and Moray Low away with their countries. However, the majority of the guys are here now, a lot of them went away to Spain with us last week on the team bonding trip and have already settled in. It’s not like they had to walk around and introduce themselves to the other players, that’s all done. Now it’s about coming in and getting some sweating done and becoming a better rugby player.”
Already the hard work has begun in earnest and over the coming weeks the intensity on all fronts is set to increase as the Chiefs look to get themselves in tip-top shape for their fifth year in the Aviva Premiership and Europe.
Baxter readily admits it's now where the hard yards are put in - both by the players and the coaches - and that new strategies will be devised to ensure the Chiefs are able to operate against the very best club sides within the Northern Hemisphere.
“There’s always a bit of tinkering you want to do with your attack and defence and the principles of how you want to play, and we like to work on those from session one,” added Baxter. “That started in a small-sided anaerobic game on Monday afternoon and we’ll have a few meetings about it. We want them to feel they’re at an exciting club and they want to put a lot of energy into it. Now that we have the testing done and we know what the scores are we can get on with some rugby and get on with getting them bigger and stronger.”
Although the players have plenty to work on between now and the start of the season, so too will the coaches as Baxter says the ever-changing face of modern-day rugby means new ideas and tactics have to be adopted.
“As coaches we should always be looking to move our game forward, that’s important, and I think for the players to be challenged with some new things that will develop them as individuals and as a team in a different way is also important,” he said. “We’ve already said, we should be saying we don’t want to be here this time next year, we want to still be on holiday because we only finished our season a couple of weeks ago.
“As an ambitious club we should be looking at this as though we are going to have a long time together, so being fresh and finding new challenges is very important. As coaches we have to do that in the right way so we get the results we want. We tend to get that balance pretty good and it’s something we’ll continue to keep working hard at it.”
Already Baxter has brought in a clutch of new signings to help bolster the playing ranks - and he says he is not ruling out adding further names before the start of the new season. As always, though, Baxter insists the fit has to be right between player and club and there will be no panic moves carried out just to bolster personnel.
He continued: “I’m comfortable with the squad we have. I know the timescales that are involved and we’re working very hard to get a couple of guys pinned down. If they don’t come off, they don’t come off, but we have a strong squad anyway. I would rather recruit over the course of the year as I have done in the past when the right players are there than just try and fill the squad with bodies which we don’t really need.
“If the options who are saying they would like to come at the moment don’t come off for whatever reason, because of release from their clubs, that’s fine and we’ll just move on to the next bunch of players that could become available.”
The Chiefs have three pre-season fixtures to get themselves ready for between now and August. The first game sees them travel to Cardiff Blues on Friday, August 15, before subsequent away days at Ulster (August 22) and Worcester Warriors (August 29). All three games kick-off at 7.30pm.
