Why Rob Baxter is waiting to unleash new All Blacks recruit

Exeter boss Rob Baxter says there is no rush to get All Blacks centre Dallas McLeod into a Chiefs shirt and that he will miss Friday night’s PREM Rugby Cup trip to Sale Sharks.

McLeod arrived in Devon two weeks ago after helping Canterbury beat Northland in the NPC final, but Baxter says they are keen to give him a decent rest after back-to-back campaigns in Super Rugby and New Zealand’s domestic competition.

And instead of making the long trip to the north-west, he is likely to be blooded when Gloucester visit Sandy Park in 10 days’ time for the final game in this block of fixtures.

“We’ve still got a couple of weeks. There’s no massive rush to get Dallas involved this week. He did have a lot of minutes and high game involvement before coming over.

“So we want to give him time to have that little bit of freshening up and recuperation and learn what we’re doing and get fully embedded in training. So I don’t think there’s necessarily a rush to involve him this week.

“But I think we’re probably looking at possibly next week to get some game involvement for him, and then we’d expect that to accelerate the process of his further game involvement,” he said.

One player who is likely to feature in Salford is Carwyn Tuipulotu, who scored a try on his Chiefs debut in the PREM Cup defeat at the hands of Bath last weekend, and Baxter was delighted with his performance.

“To be fair, I thought he was one of the bright spots for us, really. He carried particularly well and got around the pitch very well, considering it’s his first game involvement for quite a considerable period of time.

“Obviously, you can see where his strength is. He’s a real destructive, powerful carrier and again will benefit from having further involvement this weekend. It certainly thickens out our options in the back-row,” he added.