Exeter explain 'ridiculously simple' reason why rookies are thriving

It was beautiful to watch, last Saturday’s demonstration of the fearlessness of youth at Sandy Park. Thirteen days earlier, you would have got long odds on Exeter reaching the Heineken Champions Cup semi-finals, but their Gallagher Premiership crash at Bath convinced Rob Baxter that he needed a radical revamp. Into the team came the likes of the baggage-free 23-year-old full-back Tom Wyatt and the 20-year-old scrum-half Will Becconsall and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Chiefs squeezed past Montpellier on the try count in their drawn round-of-16 tie and they then did a wonderful quarter-final number on the Stormers, the reigning URC champions who had eliminated Harlequins from the tournament the previous week.

Wyatt, who had been playing at Cornish Pirates, scored for the second European weekend in succession and Becconsall, who emerged via the university route, provide a try assist as well as numerous other energetic interventions to help Exeter win 42-17 and secure a semi-final in France versus La Rochelle, the defending champions. Bliss.

Four days on from that triumph, director of rugby Rob Baxter was still beaming on Wednesday about what had happened. His team’s previously stodgy play had been transformed into a sumptuous winning blend and it now has Exeter believing they can go to Bordeaux on April 30 and reach the final three years after they became 2020 champions following an epic tussle with Racing in Bristol.

What has played out in recent weeks has reflected positively on the long-serving Baxter and the clinical way he finessed his team selection. “They [Wyatt and Becconsall] have been playing and we have been aware they are good players and they are on form – so that makes that kind of thing simple.

“But I always said the dynamic of the team needed changing; it was just getting a little samey-samey in my eyes and that just needed to change a little bit. There needed to be a freshness and excitement about the side. That is not just coming from the young players, that has had to come from the senior players as well. Sometimes that happens with the challenge of different voices on the field, but those guys have just played exceptionally well. They have talked and have brought the vibe. We have seen the energy and the fearlessness of youth. Sometimes they are the best qualities you can bring into a team.”

It was off the bench in November at Northampton when the-then 19-year-old Becconsall made his Premiership debut. The older Wyatt had been on the fringes for much longer, debuting in the lockdown restart of the 2019/20 season, but until the round-of-16 tie against Montpellier, he hadn’t featured in the Exeter first team this year apart from in the second-string Premiership Rugby Cup tournament.

Going from nowhere to European standouts overnight was quite the leap for the rookie duo, but they thrived. “There is no magic necessarily to it, they have taken different routes,” Baxter downplayed. “Tommy Wyatt was a guy who got involved in an outreach with our academy group. He was highlighted as being a good player, got involved in some A-League games and Prem Cup and we contracted him.

“He has worked extremely hard down there at Pirates. It’s a good hour-and-a-half, two-hour drive to get down there on a good day without holiday traffic and they stay down there for blocks of time. We expect them to work very hard to become complete players and show they are some of the best players in the Championship if they want to break through – and actually it’s as much a test of character as anything else.

“Tom has come through that very well. I can’t speak highly enough of the coaching staff down at Pirates. They have been a great influence on a lot of our players playing in a very competitive league with lots of challenges. You know, a lot of travelling, you see different parts of the world, it is a really good foundation for a young player.

“That has been great for Tom and for me, it has just been fantastic to see the confidence he has come into the team with on the back of regular game time. That has been the key for Tom and it’s the right time to bring somebody in – when they are on form.

“Will is slightly different,” he continued. “He got accelerated quite quickly but again he has not had what you would call that absolute classic academy pathway. He went to uni without an academy contract… and he earned a financial contract after a year at uni because of the quality he was playing. A couple of coaches were watching and said he had a lot of qualities.

“We started to involve him in pre-season this year where he covered nine, 10; he might have come on at full-back over in Ulster pre-season. He looked a very good player but then unfortunately got injured and it just took that little bit of a while for him to come through and get back into his uni games.

“But because we had seen the qualities before and because we needed to make a change – I had made a definitive decision post the Bath game that we needed to change something in the dynamic of the team, and he was one of those key players. What he is really doing is following it through.

“The one thing I will say about those young guys – and the one thing that is really important and people mustn’t underestimate – is I personally put a lot of onus on the rest of the team that it is a matter of honour for those guys to have the best opportunity to do well.

“One of the things is you make a nine’s job a lot easier if they have got someone to pass to. I know that just sounds ridiculously simple but if your forwards aren’t reloading quickly enough off the floor or if we receive a ball in a kick situation, if we are not working extremely hard to get back and give him easy or quick pass options, that there is not a forward or a 10 demanding the ball, you can get pretty stodgy around rucks and breakdowns.

“I said to the forwards if you have got a young nine, it’s your job to give them a platform. You have got to be as motivated as ever to make it good for him. The same for Tom Wyatt. You have got to look after these guys because when these guys started out in their careers, our senior players and some of them are England internationals and British Lions now, they were senior players who looked after them, gave them a platform to work from, brought them into a team that they could help be successful in.

“It has not just been the quality of those lads as good as they have been. I’m not going to downplay that – they have been fantastic. But they have had a really good influence on the team and the team has really stood up as well. That is what has been the important aspect in the last couple of weeks for us.”

What about the prospect of now having to go to France to take the next step; what will the Baxter approach be with his eye-catching youngsters? “You have just got to leave them alone because that is half the problem we have got, how much baggage we drag around as a team.

“Once you have been in finals on a regular basis, we were top two for six years on the bounce in the Premiership, there is a lot of baggage from those years and a lot of the players who are here have achieved a lot of those finals. Same with winning the Heineken Cup before, winning the double, you are dragging baggage around with them, but these (young) lads aren’t dragging baggage around because they haven’t experienced it yet.

“That is part of the reason we have been able to keep pushing on. You have got to have a balance in understanding how you can win games, but you have got to make sure it is not baggage, that it is stuff you use very positively. That is what we have seen in the last few weeks, in particular, using the youth and using experience very positively.

“I’m not concerned about the young guys going into the semi-final. I am probably more concerned about the more senior guys who might worry about it too much and that might stop them really expressing themselves. All we have got to do the next few weeks (in the Premiership) is just free ourselves up.”