60 2GM Tuesday October 20 2020 | the times
SportRugby union
Baxter ‘eyeing
England role’ –
but could he
make big leap?
director of rugby does not prepare
anyone fully for being a Test coach and
therefore Baxter would still represent
something of a gamble for the RFU.
The two jobs are so different. Baxter
has spent a decade building up Exeter
with good coaches, smart recruitment
and a good academy to be a team
stronger than the sum of its parts. As
Baxter said on Saturday night, all the
small steps led to their triumph over
Racing 92.
That process is a world away from the
win-at-all-costs environment of Test
rugby, where an England coach has the
players for short stints with little
control in between camps and fans
have no patience for building projects.
Credibility is also critical. That was
why the RFU hired Jones in late 2015,
after stipulating that the England coach
had to have a track record of inter-
national success.
The RFU had backed Stuart Lancas-
ter in 2012 and did not want another
coach learning on the job after
England’s dismal World Cup in 2015.
Baxter may come up against theArchitect of Exeter’s
success wants to be
first since Woodward to
make step up from club
game, writes Alex Lowe
the ruck podcast
‘I don’t buy it. Russell
had a poor game.’
Insight. Opinion. Humour.
Dallaglio. Jones. Lowe.Download from your usual podcast
provider or at thetimes.co.uk/sportHenry Slade
scores Exeter’s
fourth try
against Racing
on SaturdayANDREW FOSKER/BPI/REXThe debate as to whether Rob Baxter
should be the next England coach was
put on ice last December when he
signed a new contract with Exeter
Chiefs through to 2023. A few months
later, Eddie Jones extended his own
deal with the national team until the
end of the 2023 World Cup.
Never one to thrust himself into the
spotlight whenever the subject has aris-
en, Baxter has always given the firm
impression of being a man totally at
peace with life in Devon, living on the
farm and working as director of rugby
for the club he joined as a 16-year-old.
“International rugby isn’t the be all
and end all for everybody, especially
when you are a younger coach,” Baxter
said in December. “I am not a career
coach; I’m not someone always looking
for the next opportunity. There are an
awful lot of things for me here, based
around my family and the club.”
In an interview given when Jones’s
future was uncertain, Baxter said that
the attraction of Test rugby was not
enough to draw him away from Exeter.
“What would really excite me is
working with some of the best players
in the country. It would be fantastic to
see what you could achieve,” he said.
“There’s loads of attractive reasons but
the attractive reasons have got to out-
weigh what you want in your life. I’ve
got unfinished business with Exeter.”
Exeter were crowned European
champions on Saturday night, a decade
after winning promotion to the
Premiership. This coming weekend
they will play Wasps (or Bristol Bears)
at Twickenham in a bid to win the
double with a second Premiership title.
And so the questions over Baxter’s
future have returned in a torrent, not
least from Tony Rowe, the Exeter
chairman who has worked with him for
11 years on a shared vision of winning
the European Cup. “We spoke after the
[final] in Bristol. I said, ‘Rob, we’re there,
mate, we’ve made it. What are we
going to do next?’ He said, ‘We’ll
do it again, won’t we?’ ”
However, Rowe also offered
the first hint that Baxter may be
more open than ever to change.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “I
think I know that eventually
his ambition may be to
coach England.”
It was a small but
potentially significant shift
in the narrative — but far
from the end of the debate.
There is a very strong
argument that being a club
same school of thought. England have
not hired a head coach from the club
game since Sir Clive Woodward.
Martin Johnson had no coaching
experience and Lancaster was in charge
of the RFU’s player pathway.
John Mitchell, the England defence
coach, may be the favourite to take over
in 2023 given his vast international
experience. However, to suggest that
Baxter’s managerial skills, his rugby
intelligence, his eye for a player and the
experience of coaching in the
white-hot intensity of Premiership and
European finals could not translate
on to the Test stage would be, frankly,
disrespectful.
His talents would just have to be
deployed in new areas. He would have
to manage relationships with fractious
clubs — but he is a board member at
Exeter, so understands the
challenges inside out.
He would face increased media
scrutiny. Yet there is no more
personable, principled and
charming man working in
English rugby than Baxter.
His players respect and
trust him. There are enough
of them in the England
squad — possibly with
more to follow — to be
certain that Baxter
could walk into that
changing room with
gravitas. Assuming he can bear
to leave Devon, that is.Baxter previously denied
interest in the England job