Just because you know something is about to happen, doesn’t mean you can stop it.

The tide comes in every morning and evening and trying to stop it is about as pointless as trying to stop me from posting Intensity Stags memes on a match week. Playing Exeter in Sandy Park has that air of inevitability about it. You mostly know what they’re going to do because a rudimentary look at their games over the last 24 months will tell you how they’re going to play – heavy runners coming off #9 in the first to second channel, a rock-solid scrum, a fantastic lineout maul and a kicker that will drain most of the kicks they need to land.

Sound familiar? It should. That was Munster’s Plan A, B & C for most of their march to two Heineken Cups in the mid-2000s and much of Exeter’s current identity in 2018 owes to that template. That sounds like an over-simplification of how Exeter like to play the game but it mostly stands up to scrutiny.

They will look to hang onto the ball for long stretches, they will punish our indiscipline from the tee and down the line, and they will almost certainly look to drive their maul right over the top of us, if at all possible. The way that Exeter will play is inevitable – but is it preventable?

Let’s get into it.

I’ll go into these teams in detail on the Blood & Thunder Podcast.

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The Red Eye Report: Exeter

An “A” would be considered top class by Champions Cup standards, a “B” would be considered good by regular Champions Cup standard, a “C” would be considered decent by PRO14 level, a “D” would be considered below par by PRO14 standards and an “E” would be something I’d consider an exploitable weakness.  

Set Piece

Offensive Scrummaging – B
Defensive Scrummaging – B 
Attacking Lineout – B
Defensive Lineout – B
Offensive Maul – A
Defensive Maul – B 

Open Play

Defensive Structure – A
Phase Play Power – B
Attacking Creativity – B 
Structured Attack Off Set Piece – B 
Structured Defence Off Set Piece – B  
Overall Fitness – B 
Kicking – C
Back Three Kick Positioning – B

I Can Make You Hurt

The Exeter Chiefs, much like Munster from 2004 to 2010, are vulnerable to two things – a team that can at least match them in the tight exchanges and elite direction at 10. You can have one or the other, but unless you have both you’re vulnerable to getting ground down by the relentless nature of Exeter’s primary talents. If you look at Exeter’s statement losses at the business end of last season, they all came against sides who had both of those qualities in abundance. That was Leinster and Saracens. If Munster are to do the business against Exeter in Sandy Park, we’ll need to bring the same qualities that Saracens and especially Leinster brought, and then some.

Before we get to that, we need to look at Exeter’s base game. I’ve watched all six of their games so far this season and taken footage from their last game against Bath where, for me, they played as well as they have done so far. This GIF is a good example of Exeter’s base pattern of play – one of three core ways they have of moving the ball up the field.

This should be the most familiar quality of Exeter’s style. Almost everything is based off #9, with pods of heavy runners coming around the corner and the backs sliding off the edge for a broadly similar carry pattern. One thing you’ll notice straight away is how little ground Exeter are making. It takes them five rucks and a migration over and back across the pitch to make 5m.

This is the kind of incremental gain that Exeter specialise in. It’s an abrasive, exhausting pattern of play that consistently challenges your defensive organisation and physicality. You’ll probably be able to resist the first ball carry and hold Exeter there but what about the fifth or sixth? What about the tenth? This is the conundrum when playing Exeter. When they are structuring their own ball, they’ll use these pods to hammer away at your defence, like the tide, and eventually, there’ll be a mistake or a good alignment for them to pour through. They add value to the basic carry and support pod with a tip on pass here and there to prevent the defence from just lining up man on man and then compressing at the last minute.

When Exeter get that crack in the defence – as they did at the end of that GIF – the tempo goes up and they go again, but closer to the try line. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the way a python crushes its prey. It squeezes and squeezes until it hears a rib pop and then goes again. Before long, the prey is out of breath and Exeter’s opposition are often in the same position.

Munster often receive criticism for playing a one-out style of rugby – something Exeter have avoided in the same media outlets, for some odd reason – but the reason why the Chiefs play like that is broadly similar to the reason’s Munster do; not every carry has to make huge ground if it saps energy out of the opposition. Exeter’s main phase possession style wants to wear down your resistance for their other attacking facets. What’s your up and down like on ruck defence? Exeter will ask this question again and again until the answer is “not quick enough” and your defence gets unbalanced and they can attack with pace to where you’re not.

But that style of play has its weaknesses, as Munster supporters will well know. Every ruck you make has to be resourced because, if it’s not, the opposition can actively steal your possession through clean turnovers or jackal penalties.

How many times did something like this happen to Munster down through the years? A narrow carrying pattern will retain the ball but unless you can get lateral separation from the previous ruck, you’ll end in a quagmire more often than not against teams that are as strong and as fit as you. When Exeter go for that lateral separation, they can be attacked at the breakdown.

When Exeter carry off #9, in a lot of ways they want you to number up at the breakdown because they’re usually quite confident of retaining possession and then using their pace in the outside backs to get around your edge defence but they usually have a key phase right at the edge of their rucking range that an openside like Cloete can get after. You want to attack Exeter when they’re at the third ruck across the field.

That would be this one on the above example;

Exeter need this ruck to set up the next wave of attack but it’s vulnerable to getting attacked and slowed. Faletau was unlucky here in that he didn’t get hands on the ball initially but, if he had – and it was a close run thing – I’d have backed him to win the turnover here.

If Munster are strong up the middle and capable of attacking Exeter’s breakdown at the edge of the 15m channel, there’s the potential to consistently disrupt Exeter as they look to reset and come back across the field.

We’ll have to make sure they don’t gimmick those wide rucks – and play something crafty with Nowell or Cordero working on the short side – but if we can manage that part of Exeter’s primary attack, we’ll be a long way to getting a result here.

Spot the times you think someone like Cloete, O’Mahony or Beirne could attack Exeter’s breakdown in this GIF.

The other form of Exeter’s attack is their work on transition. Exeter’s normal attacking structure is mainly phase based off #9 with little in the way of artifice – they make rucks and they resource them until you fall off. When you have Jack Nowell, Henry Slade and Santiago Cordero in your backline, you want to get the ball into their hands and Exeter have certainly improved in that regard but I’ve mainly seen Exeter’s forwards show off their hands when they’re playing off the opposition’s turned over possession.

That isn’t to say that you won’t see screen movements from Exeter every now and then but you’ll mainly see their forwards throwing longer range passes in circumstances like the above.

They’ll offload, they’ll throw 10m passes and they’ll eventually look to get the ball into Nowell’s or Cordero’s hands for a line break. Steenson has a reliable pass and boot off both sides, so expect him to be the one who adds width to any break or puts boot to ball in a way their back three can contest. If we’re sloppy with possession in the middle of the field, Exeter have the weaponry to hurt us on the return.

Set Piece

I’d rate Exeter’s maul as being quite good but I think their lineout can be got at by O’Mahony and Beirne. Some of their primary jumpers are a little slow into the air and much of the lineout machinations used by Exeter is to disguise this lack of elite speed in the air.

Other than that, Exeter’s work is pretty good here but their main strength is once they get the ball down. They have a very strong driving maul that mainly works on a drive-strain-peel technique. The Chiefs overload up the middle, wait for a surge up one side or the other and then peel through the gap when the opposition strain themselves out on a futile shunt up the side of their maul.

For the most part, Exeter use a flat, “Stingray” like maul shape that gives them good manoeuvrability with a short range of motion.

If you don’t give them a side to pivot to and keep men over as cover, a technically solid 4/5 man defensive maul can stop them up long enough to get a first stop and use.

On our throw, I think Exeter are vulnerable to a long maul build, as they’re a little short in the pack so they’ll struggle to get hands-on us early in that particular construction. They might not have a lot of height – 6’5″ at the tallest in the pack – but they do have a lot of low centre of gravity grunt. You won’t walk over Exeter easily but you can use their tendency to mostly angle towards the touchline against them.

I think Exeter mainly do this use their good maul defence to constrict the opposition close to the touchline and to avoid their forwards covering too much ground off the maul break infield. They do have a tendency to over shove once they feel they have an edge on that touchline angle and that can give you an opportunity to drill through once they go past the point of the ball. Look to Beirne’s try against Leinster last week for an example of what can work later today.

Attacking The Chiefs

No, not with blankets covered in smallpox, these are a different type of Chiefs than the ones that apparently lived in Cornwall in the late 90s.

Exeter’s defence is formidable up the middle of the pitch but vulnerable to getting tracked at the edges if you use screens effectively. Goggin’s role in this endeavour will be hugely important. If you strike at the Chiefs centre-field defence, you’ll get a shot at their edge with a quick recycle and tight enough hands in the outside channel.

Goggin and Stander will play a big role here.

Bath almost caught Exeter with the exact same move a few minutes later but Priestland’s pass slowed their progress across the field and gave the Chiefs a look at an intercept – something they get more than their fair share of.

Exeter are pretty one paced across the pack so Kvesic will have a lot of work to do to cover across the spaces for them. He’s filling the Simmonds role here and will be covering a lot of ground for the heavy pair of Ewers and Armand.

Exeter know they’re vulnerable to this type of possession because of the relative speed of their pack to their backline, so you can usually buy a penalty or two when they try to kill the ball if they don’t win the collision.

Also – look at the space behind the defensive line for a kick through.

On multiphase, you can find a gap or two around “C” when they have Williams defending further out from the ruck.

If Munster can resist Exeter’s base game, attack their breakdown and keep our scrum tidy against their big tighthead pressure, we can get what we want out of this game. A losing bonus point would be a good result, I think, but I have a funny feeling that we’re a bad matchup for Exeter style-wise. It should be good regardless.