Sam Simmonds was voted European player of the year last season but Rob Baxter, his director of rugby at Exeter Chiefs, believes that the No 8 is pushing himself to even greater heights this season.
Baxter highlighted Simmonds’s potential to become the highest try-scorer in a single season in England as a statement of his form. The record for the most tries in a Premiership season is held by four players (Christian Wade, Thomas Waldrom, Neil Back and Dominic Chapman) with 17; Simmonds is on 14 with seven rounds of the regular season still to be played.
Simmonds has been ignored by Eddie Jones’s England for three years. “If he is angry,” Baxter said, “and has got a point to prove to England selecting then that’s great and there is nothing wrong with that being a driver.
“I think he is having a good season because he is a very good player and it is as simple as that. Sometimes we look for all of these complex drivers.
“They are all motivators — but ultimately, you can only play well if you are a great player. So the foundation of it all is: he is a good player and whatever his motivations are, then great. I’m hoping that his motivations are that he wants to play well and he wants to do well for his mates in the team.”
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Exeter play Leinster at Sandy Park on Saturday in what will be their toughest examination yet of their ability to defend their Heineken Champions Cup trophy. Baxter says that his team need players like Simmonds to raise them to new heights.
He said: “What we focused on is: if you want to build ongoing success, it’s very much about what the individuals want to achieve. Who’s going to have their best season? Who’s going to beat personal bests? Who’s going to set records? If you look at clubs who have ongoing success in almost any sport, what you’ll find is that a group of players have ongoing better seasons, or a rookie comes out of nowhere and has a season’s best performance.
“All these clubs are driven by someone who sets themselves high standards and is motivated to have an individual season above what they’ve had before, and that leads and galvanises the team, and when you get four or five guys who do it, that creates an even better environment.
“As an example, standing out to me already, look at where Sam Simmonds is on tryscoring. There is potential there for a guy to go on and be the highest scorer in the Premiership. There is an opportunity there for a guy to have a season’s best in an area of the game.
“Those kind of things are things you want to see. Talking at the start about winning trophies — it’s all a bit pie in the sky unless individuals decide to have their best seasons. That is ultimately the bigger challenge.”
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Jack Nowell, Exeter’s international winger, is very close to a comeback, having not played since October. Baxter said: “We’re at that stage where you tend to get to with Jack Nowell’s recovery whereby we’ve got the reins on him and we’re holding him back, but he’s there or thereabouts. Jack would say yes he could play, I would say history says he could potentially hurt himself again, so I would say no. That’s how close he is.”
Exeter v Leinster
Champions Cup semi-final
Sandy Park, Saturday 5.30pm
TV: BT Sport
