Rob Baxter on Sarries rivalry and the battle for top four

Rob Baxter admits that one of the fiercest rivalries in English rugby remains very much alive as his Exeter Chiefs side prepares to face Saracens on Saturday afternoon.

The rivalry has intensified over the past decade after the Devon team lost three Premiership Finals in four years to the North London club between 2016 and 2019.

Then, 157 days after Saracens secured a 37-34 victory at Twickenham and just hours after England’s defeat in the Rugby World Cup final, it was announced they had been breaching salary cap regulations for three years.

They were fined a total of £5,360,272.31 and had 35 league points deducted, and Baxter didn’t hold back in making his feelings known, telling the Daily Telegraph. “They’re just not real. I look at the other 10 Premiership clubs, but there is one club whose results I don’t set any store by now because we don’t know if there is any honesty behind them. There certainly hasn’t been for three years.

“How Saracens play now is the least important thing for me in the Premiership. What I used to do is watch them in order to learn from it, learn how to try to beat them. Now the big lesson on how you achieve what Saracens have achieved is to be outside the rules that we are all adhering to,” he said.

Head-to-Head

Last 5 Meetings

Wins

2

Draws

0

Wins

3

Average Points scored

25

32

First try wins

80%

Home team wins

80%

These days he is more conciliatory, but the rivalry remains as strong as ever despite the 196 miles between Sandy Park and the Stone X Stadium.

“It still lingers because they are habitually a good side and a top-four side and above. Whatever happened in the past has happened in the past,” he remarked.

“But the reality is they are a marker of where you are going to be in the season and how competitive you are going to be. We are slightly above them in the league at the moment, but things can flip quickly because everything is so tight.

“It’s always going to be a big game. Whatever happened in the past is relevant to a degree because the competition is there.

“This game has top-four importance to both of us, and that makes it more real than it has been for a couple of years, I’d say.”

The Chiefs have one of the tightest defences in the Gallagher PREM on the road, and they’ll need to maintain that kind of solidity because Saracens have scored an average of 44.7 points at home this season.

“Teams score points nowadays, and the way of staying in the game is by not conceding soft points, and that is going to be the challenge for us. They have got a good kicking game and play a tough territorial game.

“You make sure you exit well, kick with accuracy, be strong under the high ball and fight for the 50-50’s on the floor. It’s the 50-50s that they are great at coming up with, and they make a lot of those into tries.”