'I'm a huge believer that the league table doesn't lie'

Rob Baxter has drawn a line under the 2021/22 season at Exeter, accepting that his Chiefs weren't good enough to be a top-four team on this occasion after six successive campaigns in which they reached the semi-finals. The Devon club have been tailed off in seventh and ahead of this weekend’s final outing versus Harlequins, he has been busy drawing conclusions and holding his hand up that they didn’t have what was needed this time around.

Asked if he felt that Exeter were good enough to make the top four and contest the semi-finals, Baxter said: “No, because the league table says we are not and I am a huge believer that the league table doesn’t lie. Rugby is a pretty good game in a lot of ways, there aren’t many lucky results.

“There is the odd one that can go against you at the end but often the games that go against you at the end are because you really haven’t quite been good enough throughout the other 79 minutes. That has happened to us a few times this season, being on the wrong end of close results late in the game, but if you want to be a top side you take responsibility for that and you move away from that scenario.

“I would say right here and now, no (we weren’t good enough). Have we got the playing ability in the squad to be in the top four and in a game when we were on it to challenge anyone in the top four? Then 100 per cent yes because we have done that this season and we have done it very recently as well and if we got to a semi-final in a week’s time we would probably be well set to give it a good go with the players we would have had available.”

The Chiefs go into the final round of the regular season with 26 points fewer than leaders Leicester who have won 19 matches compared to the Devon club's twelve wins. Baxter attributes the blame to the early-season Exeter form but rather than feel aggrieved about that, he has lately taken a different perspective on what unfolded.

“I’ll hold my hand up. Initially, I could have guided us as a coaching team and maybe as a player group differently in the early part of the season. We could have been a bit more positive about what was happening within that playing group whether game by game or half by half.

“The huge focus was on the collection of points when actually with that playing group for most of them they were having the time of their lives because they were getting their first Premiership experience, they were getting their first experience playing in front of big crowds. We didn’t focus on that enough. The winning and losing wasn’t the most important thing for them.

“In our individual reviews this week we had quite a few guys who had a great season, their best season. When you have a chunk of your team who think it is their best season because they have got into the team playing and they are progressing and you have finished the worst you have in the league for six years, it feels quite contradictory.

“But that doesn’t mean it is not the truth because for those guys it has been their best and that is probably what we didn’t quite grab together as a group at the start of the season and that then made it hard for us to drive forward.

“The last couple of weeks we have had individual reviews and, on a whole, it has been a positive experience. The first thing that needs to happen is we all need to take our element of responsibility. There are certain things that I have seen and assessed that I have had I had a lot of thought about over the course of the season.

“Hindsight is a brilliant thing to have but you have still got to use it, you can’t ignore the fact that you look back and there are things we could have changed. There are certain things I look back on now that I perhaps could have taken a slightly different view on which may have helped us throughout the season and come through a little stronger than we have.

“There are a lot of things we are talking about as a coaching group, the leadership group of the players and the actual playing group and there are still a lot of positives around a lot of things. That is the thing to make sure you keep remembering because sometimes the bigger picture can weigh you down too much or become too influential on what is happening and that may well be something that had happened a little bit this season.”