By Mark Stevens
5/8/22

Exeter Chiefs Director of Rugby Rob Baxter has not ruled out adding to his squad ahead of the new 2022/23 season, which kicks-off next month with the visit of Leicester Tigers to Sandy Park.

Having added Tongan international Solomone Kata to his ranks earlier this week, Baxter hinted that there could yet be more incomings with potential spaces to fill in the forwards.

“We still have a couple of slots that we could fill,” said Baxter. “With Will Witty moving on, that’s opened up a space there, and there’s a little bit of room potentially around the front-row that I’m still looking at.

“That said, we are starting to look where we need to be. So far we’ve got a good block of training into the guys that are here. It would have been nice to have got through this period with a few less operations and a few more guys on the field able to train regularly, but it’s very rare that Premiership clubs get to do that now.

“Overall, though, we’re looking good and the guys look like they are bonding together nicely, which is really important. Initially, we didn’t think we would get Solomone over here as early as we have, so it’s great that he is here and settling in because that means we can get him on the pitch a lot earlier as well.”

With just a month to the opening fixture on Saturday, September 10, Baxter admits he is liking what he is seeing from his players in the countdown to the big kick-off.

“The guys are working extremely hard,” added Baxter. “We have reconfigured the gym over the summer, so that everything can run a bit more smoothly. To be fair, we can’t question how hard they have worked and the challenges we have set them.

“We’ve got a leadership group who are really driving the way and we have got a bit of freshness about us. Weirdly – and I know this sounds a bit strange – finishing seventh last season has for some of the guys taken a bit of pressure off them. For others, it will have added a bit of pressure, probably me more than anyone else, but actually we’ve tried not to look at it like that.

“Instead, we’ve tried to look at it as a bit of a fresh start and it’s now our jobs to kind of rebuild that team that challenges at the top again. It’s not like there is an expectation that Week One it has to be perfect. We’ve changed a few things – new defence coach, we’re slightly changing our attack – and we’re just going to start to work our way through a lot of those things over the next three or four weeks running into those first few games.”

With reigning champions Leicester Tigers first up for the Chiefs, Baxter and his squad can now focus their minds on what should be a mouth-watering opening day fixture.

“I’ll be honest, I think we would have been this excited whoever we were facing first up,” continued Baxter. “But that one is as good as any to start with. Playing Leicester gives us a real focus and it gives the crowd a real opportunity to come in and pack out Sandy Park and see what this group of players are going to be about this season. It just gives us an opportunity to lay down a marker.”