Everything and nothing has changed since the 2020-21 Premiership season kicked off back in November. Harlequins entertained Exeter at the Twickenham Stoop and the outcome – Quins 3-33 Exeter - spoke for itself. You would have been offered long odds on the hosts making the end of season play-offs, never mind the possibility of the same sides contesting the final in the dog days of June.
The following week Quins travelled to Northampton and conceded 29 points, the good news being that they scored 49 themselves. Next up they shipped 24 points at Gloucester and, again, still won. In round four they were beaten 27-19 at home by Bristol after leading 9-5 at half-time. This trend of defensive largesse has continued, despite the exit of their head coach Paul Gustard, to the extent that only a rock-bottom Worcester and a strangely leaky Bath conceded more tries in the regular season.
There is a flipside, though. Only Exeter have scored more tries than Quins over 22 games. Points-wise the London side have outscored every other team in the regular season, so much so that only one Premiership side – the Saracens of 2017-18 – have amassed more points since the 1999-2000 season. Which begs the all-important question: what are the chances of attack trumping defence, when it really matters, over the next fortnight?
Let’s start with Quins. So far they have averaged 32 points per game; do the same against Bristol in the first of two potentially eye-catching semi-finals on Saturday and, statistically, the fourth-best side in the league will have a shot. No one disputes the Bears are also brilliant going forward but high-scoring thrillers, perversely, are not necessarily their forte.
Remember Clermont winning 51-38 at Ashton Gate in December? Or the epic league game on the same pitch in March when Quins entered the last six minutes leading 33-21? The visitors ended up losing 35-33, courtesy of a last-gasp driven converted try by their former prop Kyle Sinckler, but the precedent is there. There is no absolute guarantee Bristol will receive another get-out-of-jail-free card this weekend.
It would have been even more interesting had Quins been able to field Mike Brown and, even more crucially, André Esterhuizen. The powerful South African centre had been forming a deadly partnership with the alert Joe Marchant, lurking out behind the purring 8-9-10 trio of Alex Dombrandt, Danny Care and Marcus Smith, until he was suspended for six games in late April. With the ever-competitive Brown also sidelined following his red card against Wasps last month, Quins are going to need Smith and co to step up big time.
In this most uncertain of seasons, however, it needs only one untimely Covid test to bring a club’s entire season tumbling down. Last weekend a third of the Premiership’s final round had to be called off and a repeat of last year – when a mass outbreak forced the cancellation of Sale’s final game and robbed them of a potential play-off spot – would be an organisational nightmare.
Assuming both semi-finals proceed as planned, however, home advantage would suggest an Exeter-Bristol final. Twenty-five out of 30 semi-finals have followed that pattern, although the Bears have lost to both Exeter and Sale in the past couple of months and were majorly under the pump at Leicester too. Nor have they been in a major Twickenham final since 1983, their European Challenge Cup win last season notwithstanding. Quins will have a go at them from the outset: if a couple of early offloads stick it could be a real classic.
Exeter? With 25 minutes left last Saturday, they were down to 14 men and trailing 19-3 at home to Sale, their prospects of a sixth straight home semi-final seemingly in tatters. The absence of Jacques Vermeulen, out for the rest of the season, was enabling the Curry twins to prosper at the breakdown and AJ MacGinty was having significant joy with little dinked kicks over the top of Alex Cuthbert on the Chiefs’ right wing.
With the red-carded Sam Skinner and the cited Dave Ewers potentially unavailable for the rematch, Exeter also face being below full strength for Saturday’s reunion. The same, though, is true for the Sharks, with the influential MacGinty, Akker van der Merwe and Cameron Neild all having incurred painful-looking injuries. Sending a full squad down to Devon last weekend was a punt that nearly paid off but the full cost could yet be deferred.
Because Exeter still have two big things going for them. The first is the strength of their tight forwards: their set piece played a significant part in Sale’s collapse. Then there is their cussedness. To come back from 18-0 down against Northampton and 19-3 against the Sharks shows serious resilience, not to mention an inner belief that they will ultimately find a way. Rob Baxter, Exeter’s director of rugby, reckons the various distractions of recent weeks – Lions selection, England squads, player of the year awards, play-off permutations etc – have contributed to a slight dilution of the Chiefs’ focus at times. He appears confident that will not be the case from now on.
What Baxter did not say, though, is that Exeter, without always hitting top gear, have quietly been setting records of their own. Their total of 93 tries, with Sam Simmonds accounting for 20 of them, is the highest any club has racked up in a Premiership regular season for 22 years. Defensively they also have the meanest “tries against” column in the league this season.
Which, with Jack Nowell and Jonny Gray close to returning, makes the defending double champions still the team to beat. Sale and Quins both deserve their play-off berths but knockout rugby is a less predictable variant and favours teams capable of digging deepest in adversity. By that measure a Chiefs v Bears final remains favourite, unless Quins have something unexpected hidden up their multicoloured sleeves.
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