Exeter Chiefs Women

They arrived from Spain, America, Holland, France, Japan, Canada, some just in time for kick off. But with a core of local talent, Exeter Chiefs somehow managed to beat the very best in the  Allianz Premier 15s.

In a Chilean prison, a 5ft 4in Spanish scrum-half is taking a rugby training session with the prisoners, many of them lifers. It’s one of four she’s visiting, together with other towns and villages in the South American region, as she single-handedly attempts to bring about change. With little support, she’s done the same with Muslim women players in Morocco and in the favelas of Brazil. Mexico, Kenya, and her homeland of Spain are the next planned destinations for Patricia Garcia, a Spanish sevens and fifteens international. But, first she had to complete her maiden season with Exeter Chiefs. 

When Susie Appleby started to build her first Exeter Chiefs squad, Patricia – a player she knew from the sevens circuit – was one of the first calls she made. “I was based in Madrid and on a professional contract with Spain, so it was a big decision,” explains Patricia, “but I’m happy that it happened. I arrived with Bimba [Laura Delgado, fellow Spanish international] in my campervan just before the Harlequins game.

“I knew I’d need a car here, so thought we’d just drive around to get here, it would be safer in the middle of a pandemic too. It could have taken three days, but we took about a week.”

Although she’d been speaking to Susie for months, other commitments meant she arrived just in time for the third Allianz Premier 15s game against Harlequins. “I was playing scrum-half, and I met my fly-half in the changing room,” she laughs, “it was, ‘Hi Taylor [Black], I’m Patricia, your scrum-half’.

“But I actually think starting from zero,” she adds, “has meant we’ve been able to build a culture from scratch, it’s actually helped us.”

Patricia has been key in developing the side on and off the pitch and she starts from a good place, and not just for her international caps, or the fact she’s played across the world in New Zealand, France, Japan and Spain. “I only started playing rugby at eighteen,” explains the 31-year-old, “but I fell in love with rugby very fast, and changed my whole life into rugby.

“That’s why I run social projects all around the world,” she says, “we take the rugby values with us as a way to educate and help to develop soft skills with people.

“We go to people with different types of social risk: exclusion, people with disabilities, vulnerable people, vulnerable context families. So, we go to the prisons, favelas, rugby clubs deep in Morocco or Spain. We go everywhere to try to spread how playing rugby can make all of us a better person.

“For example, we had one child that had been bullied and, through rugby, he gained so much self-confidence, and friends and family, he developed himself in more than just the sport but for life too. 

“And when you see that guy taking the ball and running, well, you never see anyone run like that, even in high performance sport, because he’s running and playing for different reasons, and that’s very inspirational and that’s very emotional.

“In Chile, you have guys that may have been there [in jail] for thirty years and suddenly, with rugby, you develop a connection with them and you see that, for one hour, they forget that they are in a prison, they feel free and play like they are ten-year-old kids.”

Although travelling with a small team, including a psychologist to help guide Patricia in each situation, she takes the session on her own. “The prison was the hardest one, because you know, they were like, ‘who is this girl and why is she here?’, so the attitude at the start is not very open, but you know, they have been in prison, they’re struggling in life.

“But as soon as we get to know each other during the session, they understand that you are not judging them, you’re not going to criticise them. They realise, you are there because of them, because you want to share your sport, your passion, and want to bring them something.”

The stories of Patricia are endless, making it easy to see why Susie opted for the Spanish international as a first pick. It’s impossible not to be inspired in her presence and, when we meet the squad on their away trip to Sale, she’s the first to come and introduce herself, despite not even knowing what we’re here for.

Today, she’s switched from nine to ten due to injuries. It’s a big game. With three games left, Exeter Chiefs are sitting fifth and a win today, coupled with Loughborough slipping up, could see them creep into play-off contention. 

Captain Linde van der Velden, the 6ft Dutch number eight, was the first player to put pen to Exeter Chiefs contract paper and, as always, anchors the pack today. Well, metaphorically at least, given the lack of scrums due to covid regulations.

Linde’s journey to Exeter also took in France, where she was playing for Toulouse, a side she left the Netherlands for. “We have four divisions in the Netherlands, but the lowest teams always had difficulties getting fifteen girls on the field. 

“Even my team, which was in the top division at one point, would struggle to get a side, and because we didn’t have a second team, the new girls would have to start somewhere. So I’d be captain of the national team and then starting in a club side with someone who only had started training four weeks ago. 

“That also made me a better player,” she says, “but at some point you have to develop, and my local coach knew someone from Toulouse, I went there for a trial and they offered me a contract.

“In the Netherlands I was getting nothing, so for me to get anything was good, but they gave me a salary which covered half of the rent they weren’t paying. You got match fees, but because I wasn’t playing much, I couldn’t live off that.”

The presence of the French captain at number eight meant Linde was unlikely to make a breakthrough anytime soon and so when former Harlequin Holly Myers suggested she give Susie a call, she had little to lose.  “The language was also a problem,” she admits. “I thought more would speak English, but they really don’t, I was learning [French], but there’s only so many conversations you can have about the weather.

“Holly said to me, ‘you should go to England’, but I always thought like, ‘I’m just the Dutch girl, who plays rugby’ I never expect anything to happen, but I wasn’t getting any game time in France, so I spoke to Susie.

“I flew overnight to play the next day at Newcastle, and then flew back to France after the game. Some of the girls had been training together for two weeks and I only met them at breakfast.”

She made an instant impact. “Susie offered me a contract straight after the game; she said, ‘we’d like you to stay, so let’s talk about it’.”

Like many of the squad, Linde cites her first-season highlight as the win over Saracens. “We already knew it was coming,” she says. “In training there were a lot of times when it clicked, but it’s one thing being a good team on a training pitch. It needs to be shown on a game day, when there are nerves to deal with.

“But on that day, we were all so confident and nobody said it, but I also felt like we were going to beat Sarries that day. I just knew it. And, after the game, everyone was like, ‘yeah I felt like that too’, but you’re not going to say anything like that beforehand. Everything was just so good. I mean, obviously there were things that were not good in attack, but our defence was so good that I think we’ve shown this season, we deserve to be up there.”

And, just like in Toulouse, where she’d get accosted for pictures and autographs by rugby-mad locals, she knows she’s in a true hotbed. “Honestly it has been crazy here,” she says. “If go for a walk and grab a coffee, I see at least six people walking around with Chiefs gear on that start talking to me – people I’ve never met, but are so nice and showing so much interest in the women’s game.”

The squad against Sale is a blend of very local and international, its diversity reflecting the huge job that’s been done this season in bringing together a squad that not only went on a seven-game unbeaten run, but took the scalps of Loughborough Lightning, Harlequins, Saracens, Wasps – in fact, every side bar Gloucester-Hartpury, were turned over at least once. 

In the starting fifteen, together with Spaniards Garcia and Bimba, there’s Welsh full-back Niamh Terry, Irish wing Laura Sheehan, Americans Gabriella Cantorna and Kate Zackary, Canadians Emily Tuttosi and McKinley Hunt, Japanese prop Sachiko Kato and Linde. This is blended with six EQP players, five of which are from Devon or Cornwall. Pull back further to the wider 40-strong squad, and you’ve got 25 EQPs, fifteen of them from the neighbouring counties. “The amount of talent down here is obscene,” says Poppy Leitch, a Devonian starting today at lock, but also head coach at Exeter University, one of the club’s key partners. “It’s mad to think that the Chiefs haven’t been in the Premiership from the beginning. 

“You’ve got Exeter, and then everything below as well, and still loads of stuff above,” she explains verbally mapping out the Chiefs’ catchment area of Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. “I think next year, there’ll be even more talent coming through,” continues Poppy. “We did a recruitment drive last week and about eighteen girls turned up and one of them was this second row called Josie. She’s sixteen, from Cornwall and, you know, a proper Cornish girl: quite rugged, quite raw and wants to get into contact. Even at sixteen she’s showing a huge amount of potential and she’s just one example.

“There’s quite a few Cornish girls down at Chiefs – Merryn Doidge, Ebony Jefferies, Michaella Roberts – and they’ve all played from such a young age, it seems they pretty much all play from the moment they’re born.”

Poppy was another to feature high on Susie’s list. The 24-year-old, who succeeded Jo Yapp at Exeter University and oversees 85 student players, spent four years at what was the west country’s nearest top-flight club, Bristol Bears. 

She started playing for them during her own student days at Exeter University, a time when such was the volume of student players turning out for the Bears that Poppy would be part of a three-car convoy between Devon and Bristol. “It was probably a slight hinderance for them to have so many Exeter players,” says Poppy, “because there were so many having to commute to training and games.”

In her final year with Bristol, when she’d also taken on the head coach role at the university, her dual role became untenable. “It was hell,” she says.  “It was really hard because I was also finding myself caught between trying to manage players who were my team-mates at Bristol, then I was their coach at uni, so the dynamic was really difficult to get right, especially as some of them had been very close friends. I think they were quite taken aback at how differently I had to approach them when I had my coach’s hat on.”

That experience meant when Susie came calling, she had one answer. “I said no, I’m not joining,” says Poppy. “She had to convince me for a long time, because when I finished at Bristol, I was not interested in rugby at all. I just said to her, ‘I can’t, I can’t do it again, I can’t do it with my job’. Bristol really made me fall out of love with the sport. And I think, you know, for a magnitude of reasons, but probably the biggest one was trying to manage my job.”

Susie tried several times, and naturally the two would work together
anyway to balance the workloads of the many players that were in both university and club camps. Ultimately though, the biggest pitch that convinced Poppy was the one with grass on. “I was just so jealous watching them enjoy the game,” explains Poppy, who was a spectator for the opening day 34-14 defeat to Gloucester-Hartpury. “I just saw them celebrating when they scored tries, and being in a huddle after the game and I was just beside myself, just thinking ‘what have I done?’.

“I called my boss Keith [Fleming, director of rugby at the university] and said, ‘will you help me make it work?’. And he said, ‘I was expecting this call anyway, of course, we’ll make it work’.”

Many of those we talk to at Exeter Chiefs, especially when it comes to the topic of how quickly they’ve bonded, point in Poppy’s direction. “I think when I’m in an environment I’m enjoying like Chiefs – and like Bristol used to be – I’m a bit like a Jack Russell, I’m all yappy and full of energy,” she says. “I’m like running around like a headless chicken, I’m just bouncing off the walls because I’m like so excited to be there, that that’s probably what they mean. I’m sure some people must find it over the top to be honest too.

“I suppose I just thought I need to go in [to Exeter Chiefs] all guns blazing,” she admits, “because if I don’t, then I’ll just become nothing in the squad because I’ve missed pre-season and I’ve missed the first game. So I probably just forced myself in as hard as I could and said, ‘you have to accept me and you have to take me on board’. 

“And yeah,” she concludes, “I really love this group of players, all of them.

“With Susie,” she continues, “it feels like we’re both on a ship and moving in the same direction, parallel next to each other. We’ve aligned the schedules, to make it flexible so that girls commit to both, and that doesn’t mean that they’ll be doing both every day, it just means that players can have a foot in the door at Chiefs and be focused at uni, or vice versa.”

Sale have progressed too. In the tightest of contests at Sale FC, it was the home side, with former England fly-half Katy Daley-Mclean pulling the strings and pushing Exeter on to the back foot, that took a deserved 10-3 half-time lead. After the break, Exeter’s Japanese prop Sachiko Kato – spotted by Susie while she was playing for Japan against Scotland and Italy and one of the star turns of the campaign – closed the gap, with the boot of Gabriella Cantorna bringing the sides level at 10-10. It was far from the bonus-point scoreline Susie was hoping for, and a last-minute score from Sale condemned Exeter to a 17-10 defeat. “Too many errors,” says Susie, adding “which is uncharacteristic of us.”

The season is still a success, even after the final-day defeat to Gloucester-Hartpury – the only side to defeat the Chiefs twice – meant they slipped to sixth. 

Susie, of course, arrived at Sandy Park from Gloucester-Hartpury. “I was happy over there you know,” she says. “I was happy living where I was living, it didn’t really cross my mind [to apply] and then a friend of mine gave me a nudge: ‘oh so you haven’t applied then?’ and it was someone from down in Exeter. 

“So I thought, ‘maybe’, it was more curiosity, honestly, and the reputation of Exeter Chiefs.”

Once in the process, and combined with the fact Rob Baxter had done his homework – when they first met up at Gordano Services he made it clear she was the No.1 choice – Susie went all-out to get the job. “I applied and then when you sit in a room and Rob Baxter is interviewing you, then it’s real,” she says. “I had to do a presentation and he asked me loads of stuff, and their main worry was that I might go back with England, but I was, ‘no, no, no, this is a life move for me, to what I consider is one of the best clubs in the country’.” 

She was appointed in September 2019, and then worked on the successful tender to reach the Allianz Premier 15s for the most recent campaign. “Rob Baxter is my line manager, but Tony Rowe is my boss,” she explains. “I’ve been at clubs where the CEO wouldn’t even know who you are, you know, as the women’s coach, but Tony and I chat once a week at least.

“He treats the women as rugby players. The players here are not men and women, everyone is just rugby players. Of course, it’s not equal you know, we don’t get paid the same, but he wants to make sure that we’re as equal as we possibly can be, which is heartening really, and I truly believe that has been why we’ve done really well this season. 

“It could have been better at the start, but we couldn’t gel when we’ve never met each other, so it’s no surprise we’ve got better since Christmas really.

“Tony wants us fully professional but we’re working to a budget,” she says. “With respect, that budget doesn’t allow for forty players to be professional and regulations stop clubs from spending as much as some would like. 

“The RFU gives you £75,000 pounds to fund your programme, that’s to contribute to your S&C, to your nutrition, to your physio, facilities, everything – it costs way more than that, it cost around £200-250,000, so it’s just a contribution,” explains Susie. “Then we are allowed to spend £120,000 pounds on players themselves, but it’s a soft salary cap going into the next season, and then a hard salary cap going into season three.

“Nobody is going to police it next season, so we could spend what we want, but we’d be crazy to, because you can’t go out and spend loads of money, and then say to those players, ‘I’m sorry I can’t pay you that anymore’ when the cap is tightened.

“I’ve had similar conversations with Jo Yapp at Worcester,” continues Susie. “We’re not in a dissimilar position in that their owner is prepared to invest, but is being hamstrung by some rules now. 

“You know what,” she  begins, “everyone would love ten England players in their setup, because they bring experience, they bring amazing expertise, they are fabulous players, that’s why they are where they are. 

“If you have England players in your midst and you can top it up a bit – Sarries, Quins, Loughborough, they’re all sitting on about eight or nine England players, so they’ve got fully paid professionals in their midst. And then you layer on others that you can then pay.

“For us, we’re always going to be a little bit behind in that respect until we can either attract England players down the road or other internationals, or grow our own into the squad.”

In the first campaign Exeter had 23 players in a full-time environment, consisting of three days a week. “It’s day-in, day-out analysis, S&C, rugby and all the things that can make them as ‘professional’ as we can, but they’re always going to need part-time jobs to supplement income,” says Susie. 

“Right now, I’m looking for part-time jobs for people coming down to join us or already with us, because I don’t want that anxiety, of, ‘how am I going to eat or live’. I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but I don’t want them to have that, because it doesn’t contribute to optimum performance.” 

Even with these constraints, she doesn’t believe it will hinder the mindset of her players. “In the women’s game, historically, girls are used to finding a way, you know,” she says. “They don’t take things for granted, they know they’re going to sacrifice so they think, ‘my goal is the World Cup in four years’ time, I know the path to get there, so this is what I’ve got to do’.

“But who knows, maybe I’ll get some England players into our mix next season and, I’ve not had those conversations, but I think players will start to realise there are more clubs out there than the ones they’re in at the moment.

“A lot of players are understandably intent on playing Olympics and World Cup, playing the biggest standard, but they want a full-time professional environment with the support of the men’s side, knowing they can be fed after training, those bits, the minimum offering standard, those are the bits that will encourage and make players move.

“We haven’t got any of those players so why stop us spending money to invest in the programme? Because Tony Rowe is willing to invest the amount of money that it needs, but it almost feels like they’re trying to stop us.”

The frustrations of having a willing owner unable to spend is at least compensated by a truly inclusive Exeter Chiefs environment, one that gives them access to facilities, expertise and a coaching team that has won European cups.  “I know I can set up a session with our nines and Ricki Pellow,” says Susie. “Gareth Steenson will do individual sessions with Gabbi Cantorna, but will also do group sessions, Haydn Thomas is regularly in doing skills sessions, Rob Hunter, forwards coach, amazing, comes in to do defence sessions so does Julian Salvi, defence coach. 

“I’m pretty much naming every member of the male coaching staff, and Rob Baxter doesn’t make them go out here, we’ve got a relationship, we’re in the same place, and they’re genuinely interested – they were texting me this morning wishing me good luck, it’s all so mutual, and that’s what I’ve never experienced at any club I’ve been at.”

When Amy Garnett, the former England and Saracens hooker, decided to leave her job as a police officer in the Met and relocate to Cornwall, rugby was the last thing on her mind. She’d long since retired from playing, and together with her partner and three kids, had left London three years ago, simply because, “life’s too short,” she says, “so we both quit our jobs and moved.” 

Exeter Chiefs women were only a twinkle in the club’s eye, and even when the DoR job was posted, she felt her experience – despite having 100 caps and spending time as player-coach at Saracens – was insufficient for the main job. “I knew the DoR role was out of reach, taking everything on,” she admits, “but I knew I wanted to be involved, and I spoke to lots of different people – like Giselle Mather, who’s a very good friend of mine – and they just said, ‘throw your hat in, you never know something might happen’.”

She met with Rob Baxter, and something did happen. “I liked what he said and they made a position for me,” says Amy. “They went after Susie, and he said, ‘could you guys work together?’ and I said, ‘yeah, Susie and I’ve played together and I knew her from old, sort of thing’.”

The only downside of their first campaign for the former frontrower has been the lack of scrums, due to post-lockdown regulations. “We heavily recruited in the forwards, particularly in the front row, and we do have a lot of props in,” she says, “I think our scrum is probably one of the strongest in the league and it’s just frustrating we didn’t get to show that a bit more.”

On the flipside, lockdown has almost helped the side to bond. “Yeah, in one way, we’ve almost just been forced together, and, because of the bubble, we’ve been the only people that we’ve been allowed to see.

“I’m lucky, I’ll get to go back home to see my family, but for the rest of the players, they’ve probably seen each other more than they would do because there’s been no other outlet for them.

“It’s actually phenomenal how close they are and how far they’ve come,” she continues, “they’ve really grabbed hold of what Susie and I are trying to do with the game and our style – they’ve taken everything in. 

“Especially when you consider they’ve literally just been thrown together,” adds Amy.

And they’re not done yet. “Susie and I are massively competitive,” she says. “We’re really pleased with how the season’s gone; it’s gone a lot better than we thought it was going to go, but we want a title. Whether that’s over a two or three year cycle, we know it takes time, but that’s got to be the aim.” 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Russ Williams

This extract was taken from issue 14 of Rugby.
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