Henry Slade: Exeter star helped team ‘believe’ in return to Twickenham

Slade, who has won 74 England caps and played in the 2019 World Cup final, is one of a handful of Exeter players left who have experienced the club’s former glories.

The Sandy Park academy graduate helped Exeter reach six successive Premiership finals from 2016 to 2021 – lifting the trophy in 2017 and 2020 – as well as a European Champions Cup triumph in 2020.

But of that Exeter side, stars like Jack Nowell, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Sam Simmonds and Stuart Hogg left the club as Covid-19’s financial realities bit.

It led to a host of new faces coming in, but success eluded them.

Consecutive seventh-placed finishes were followed up by ninth last term as Exeter suffered their heaviest-ever loss and finished with just four wins all season – their worst-ever top-flight campaign.

Baxter now hopes some of their soon-to-be-departing players – like former Australia prop Scott Sio – have the chance to end their Exeter careers on a high as they head to Twickenham next Saturday to face regular-season table-toppers Northampton Saints.

“I’ve said to a few of them, the thing I’m most proud of or most pleased of is that they’ve got to experience what I’d call a decent Exeter Chiefs season,” Baxter said.

“We had quite a few of those lads who’ve never been the people experiencing it and I was starting to hate it a little bit.

“A guy like Scott Sio, I bring him over, ask him to be part of something, tell him I think we can build something special – and he has four years, and one of the years is the worst year the club have.

“You’re kind of thinking ‘this is just not how I wanted it to be for these guys’ because he’s committed so fully to everything.

“For him to go on the back of playing in the winning semi-final, now playing in the Premiership final, the same with Christ Tshiunza, the same with Rusi (Tuima), these guys haven’t experienced what a great Premiership season feels like and they’re feeling it now and I just hope we can finish it off for those guys.”