Exeter boss Rob Baxter explains last month's 10-hour payroll delay

Exeter boss Rob Baxter has insisted there was nothing sinister behind the club’s players getting paid 10 hours late last month, the director of rugby instead insisting a clerical error was to blame.

The Gallagher Premiership lost three clubs to financial problems last season – Worcester, Wasps and London Irish – and the 2023/24 club season in England began with the September collapse of Jersey Reds, last season’s Championship champions.

However, Baxter dismissed the recent worrying speculation about the Sandy Park club and instead explained that human error was the reason behind the unwanted headlines.

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Speaking to DevonLive, he said: “There is no story except that three other Premiership clubs have gone bankrupt recently, that is what makes it a story.

“The players weren’t paid a day late, they were paid on the same morning they were meant to be paid. The reality is we have an automated system that gets put to a bank with all the details of the payroll and the account the money comes out of and that normally drops into the players’ account at midnight on the day they get paid.

“It hadn’t been paid by seven or eight o’clock in the morning and I was made aware and contacted the accounts department here (at Sandy Park) and they were already aware of it and talking to the bank. Quite simply someone had entered an error in the account name or number which means the automated payroll didn’t go.

“They were all paid by 10am. The problem is that at some stage in those few hours someone has texted someone else asking if they have been paid and a journalist has got hold of it.

“The club are looking into the scenario that if people are making a big issue out of it in a false way and it costs us financially then the club are looking at our legal position because ultimately everyone has been paid on the correct day of the month.

“There seem to be a couple of stories around making more of it than that. If that were to make us lose sponsors then there is a financial aspect to it. The club are looking on it very negatively because the club have done nothing wrong. Everyone has got paid on time.

“The only reason it has probably come out is because someone has had a panic at some stage about why they haven’t got paid. We, like a lot of the other clubs, have got players who have been at clubs that have gone bankrupt who have had the same story.

“They don’t get paid one day and then… But I was sat in a meeting with the lads and said you are all going to get paid in the next couple of hours and before the end of the meeting they had all got paid.”

Exeter are currently third in the Premiership after last Sunday’s last-gasp Henry Slade penalty secured them victory over Gloucester.

They now travel to bottom-side Newcastle next Sunday looking for their first away win in the league since an October 2022 success against Bristol at Ashton Gate.