The Premiership’s longest-serving director of rugby brushes off retirement talk as he focuses on returning Exeter to the top

Occasionally it is worth reflecting on what success in sport really looks like. Is it measured by silverware alone or by a much wider set of parameters – the long-term flowering of a club, say, or the depth of regional pride? The biggest compliment you can pay Rob Baxter, the Premiership’s longest-serving one-club director of rugby, is that once-unfashionable Exeter is now the last place where opponents want to kick-off a brand new season.

In a decade and a half under Baxter’s stewardship, among other things, the Chiefs have yet to lose a round one game at Sandy Park, magnifying the challenge facing Leicester in the opening game of the Michael Cheika era. Stir in the intense pre-season fitness work at the Royal Marines commando training centre at Lympstone and the intricate tactical planning of Baxter and his fellow coaches and the Devonians remain a force at their hilltop lair above junction 30 of the M5.