62 2GM Thursday October 15 2020 | the times
SportRugby union
their Corsica camp will make up for
lost time. “Everything we’ve done with
Corsica and the hotel bubble has
made up for it,” Russell, the Scotland fly
half, said.
Card games and PlayStation have
filled in the social hours. “In the current
climate we can’t complain too much,”
Russell said. “We’re as safe as we can be
and doing as much training as possible.
We’re able to train like a normal week,with the gym training too, maybe a
couple of extra meetings.
“It’s been good training-wise. Last
week and maybe the start of this week
wasn’t ideal but we’re in a good place
going into the final.”
Covid is the first hurdle that every-
one is assuming they will clear. The
rugby, meanwhile, is all-consuming.
Baxter and the Exeter coaches are
weighing up the issue of whether toselect Nowell, who is back from a foot
injury. Baxter yesterday recalled the
England wing’s performance in last
year’s Gallagher Premiership final. “I
don’t think I have seen a wing play a
better game in the Premiership final,”
he said.
On the other hand, he has Tom
O’Flaherty and Olly Woodburn fit and
in form. “You know what Jack’s capable
of doing,” Baxter said. “But we have towatch him train and assess it carefully
to make sure he’s at the level to perform
like that.”
Meanwhile, Baxter has also been
focused on shutting down the
threat that Russell provides. There will
be no “wonder shot,” he said, to
nullify Russell.
“He’s a fly half so he needs quality
ball. You can affect his quality of ball
around how you work in the set piece
and the breakdown, and then you can
put him under pressure with line speed
or numbers, then you can look at his
kicking game by reading body
language, by picking up the tells in their
attacking formations.”
For Russell, preparation for the final
has had to focus as much on how to
stop the Exeter attack as how to break
their defence.
“Once they get into your 22, Exeter
are ruthless,” he said. “We know how
dangerous they are there and we’ll be
ready for that challenge. For me as a 10,
it’s how we can get out of our 30 metres
as effectively as possible, without
putting pressure back on us with Hoggy
[Stuart Hogg] at full back.”
Russell will be a key figure in the final
yet, as Baxter said, Exeter “are not going
to be completely zoned in on one guy”.
Nor should they be because, according
to Russell, Racing have the solution to
breaking Exeter’s defence. “It’s simple,”
he said. “I just give the ball to Virimi. It’s
easy.” That was a playful reference to
Racing’s star centre, Virimi Vakatawa.
However, Racing have to get the
right Covid results before the fun can
really begin.B
efore Exeter Chiefs came up to
the Premiership in 2010 there
were a few sides promoted from
the Championship who yo-yoed
between the two divisions. You could
put out a slightly weaker side and still
be confident of coming away with five
points. You never got that with the
Chiefs because right from the off they
were tough and abrasive. They were a
different breed.
Obviously you have to give a lot of
credit to Rob Baxter, who has beenExeter don’t need crowds – they play for each other
there for it all. From what I can see
on the pitch and hear from his players
off it, he is a coach who strikes the
right balance between being task-
focused and people-focused. I suspect
at heart he sees himself as one of the
lads. You can tell that the players love
playing for him and each other and
that’s very important at this time.
I had Eddie Jones on my podcast
just before the restart and he said that
the teams which would do well in the
new conditions would be those that
didn’t need the spectacle and the big
crowds to get them motivated. That’s
Exeter down to a T, they’re just good
lads.
In terms of how they play, they
obviously have a strong set piece,
which again reflects Baxter’s coaching
wisdom. Too many coaches see a
team — New Zealand, for example —play a particular brand of rugby and
say, “That’s how we want to be,”
rather than adapt their tactics to their
players. England were guilty of this
before Jones. When he came in, he
knew that a powerful set piece and
aggressive defence were more in tune
with our DNA so that is what he set
to work on first.
Once you have those basic building
blocks in place, you can tack on to the
game plan the flair and ambition.
That’s what we have seen at Exeter:
the way that Henry Slade has come
on; giving Joe Simmonds his head at
fly half; bringing in Stuart Hogg at
full back.
You know too that if they get five
lineouts inside your 22, they will score
from at least two of them, which
makes them difficult to beat and
means you can’t afford any illdiscipline even in the middle of the
park because they will simply launch
the penalty kick to touch and work
from the attacking lineout.
It’s also why Sam Simmonds, who is
usually on the end of the resulting
driving mauls, is joint-third on the
Premiership tryscoring list for this
season. Their other key strength in
attack is that they are always
throwing numbers at your defence
and when the hole emerges they have
the right men — Hogg, Slade and
Jack Nowell — to take advantage.
From a back-row perspective,
I know what a potent combination
they could have in Sam Skinner, Dave
Ewers and Sam Simmonds. I won’t
forget the first time I came up against
Simmonds and I couldn’t believe,
given how young he was, how hard he
ran at us. I later found out he hadstarted off as a wing, which explained
a lot and probably confirmed that the
writing was on the wall as far as my
career was concerned.
Can they do it in Europe? The
Champions Cup is an attritional
tournament where you can’t afford
any lapses, so it’s no surprise that it
has taken them time to scale its
summit, as it has all the top clubs over
the years. First they turned Sandy
Park into a fortress, then they showed
they were hard to beat on the road —
thrashing La Rochelle, edging out
Sale Sharks and drawing with
Glasgow Warriors. The best way to
beat them is to starve them of
possession but that’s easier said than
done. There is no doubt the double is
within their grasp.
6 What a Flanker (Harper Collins) by
James Haskell is out nowJames Haskell
Former England
back-rowerkell
The recent Covid-19 outbreak at
Racing 92 will not diminish the
team’s chances in the Heineken
Champions Cup final against
Exeter Chiefs in Bristol on
Saturday, insists Finn Russell,
the French club’s star No 10.
To reduce the chances of any
further spread of infection, the
squad have been bubbled in
hotels since last Wednesday.
On Sunday they switched
venues and took over the hotel
at a training base in Corsica and
they have not been allowed outside
their accommodation apart from
for training.
Exeter have returned a clean sheet
on the Covid front, without a single
positive in their latest round of tests.
They are awaiting the results from
Racing’s latest round of testing, which
took place yesterday morning.
A reported nine Racing players and
staff members tested positive two
weeks ago, which forced their Top 14
game against La Rochelle to be post-
poned. The club have since returned a
round of testing in which all the players
were negative. A meeting of the compe-
tition’s medical review group has been
timed for this morning; if Racing’s tests
are again all negative, the review panel
will not need to meet.
This has become the preamble to
what Rob Baxter, the Exeter director of
rugby, described as “probably the
biggest game in the club’s history”.
(The word “probably” was probably
superfluous.)
Exeter faced an anxious wait before
hearing their results. “We didn’t start
hearing them until 5.20am this
morning,” Baxter said. “Virtually all the
staff were sat by their phones from 5am.
It’s an interesting period of time.”
For Exeter, though, it has been com-
paratively straightforward. It is not
only for Covid that they have had a
clean bill of health; they have survived
the traditional tweaks and strains. Even
Jack Nowell is available again for selec-
tion, though it is by no means a sure
thing that he will be in the starting XV.
Racing, meanwhile, had to lock down
their training base for five days and
have been hoping that the intensity ofRussell’s relaxed and ready to let rip
d
Russell and Hogg are team-mates
for Scotland but will be competing
against each other in Saturday’s finalScotland fly half tells
Owen Slot that same
free-spirited Racing 92
face Exeter — despite
recent Covid outbreak
Friendships
put on hold
for the final
When Finn Russell faces
Stuart Hogg in the Heineken
Champions Cup final on
Saturday it will be the first
time the Scotland and
former Glasgow Warriors
team-mates have been on
opposite sides since they
were playing in the Gala
Sevens as teenagers, Russell
for Stirling and Hogg for
Hawick (Owen Slot writes).
Russell recalls games against
Hogg going back to when they
were 12 and 13. He is reminded
of poor haircuts, though he
says that Hogg is still making
questionable decisions in that
department: “He’s almost gone
back to what he was like at
school with those blond tips.”
Though they are in
opposition on Saturday, they
were on the same Zoom call
on Tuesday with the Scotland
management, including Gregor
Townsend, the head coach with
whom Russell has “patched up”
his differences.
The long association between
the two players will influence
the tactical game this weekend.
Russell said: “It is good, I know
Hoggy so I will be able to add a
little bit in maybe the attack, in
how Hoggy will defend.
“I know what threats he has
got and maybe we can target
him in defence or in the air. It is
good knowing him but he
knows what I might look for and
he might be able to counter
that. Maybe I’ll play with my left
foot this weekend to try to
throw him off a little bit.”Exeter Chiefs
v Racing 92
Heineken Champions Cup
final, Saturday 4.45pm
TV: BT Sport 2 and
Channel 4
Radio: 5 LiveStuart Hogg Finn Russell