Exeter’s Baxter ready for one last battle with Saracens’ McCall

"People might be surprised our relationship has always been pretty good," Rob Baxter says of Mark McCall.

The outgoing Saracens boss has been a nemesis for Baxter's Exeter side over the years - almost the Kryptonite to the Chiefs' Superman.

Exeter face McCall one last time on Saturday on what is effectively a knockout game for a place in the Prem semi-finals.

The Devon side have only beaten Saracens once in a play-off game - their dramatic last-gasp 2017 semi-final win at Sandy Park.

They were beaten by Saracens in the league's showpiece final in 2016, 2018 and 2019 - wins which were later marred by the London side's flouting of the Prem's salary cap rules.

"I probably spoke to him more before the salary cap stuff than I have since, but we don't walk into rooms and blank each other and ignore each other, it's not like that. I don't think sport is like that," Baxter told BBC Sport.

"He's got a lot of respect from the players at Saracens. I think that's probably the most important thing.

"If you have respect from the players and they think highly of you, that's probably the biggest accolade you can have, and I think that's clearly the case at Saracens."

Between them, Exeter and Saracens won every Prem title between 2015 and 2020, as well as winning four European Champions Cups during that period.

But since Covid-19 hit the sport's finances, the salary cap scandal saw Saracens relegated to the Championship and the two sides have won just one title since - Saracens' victory in 2023.

While McCall's team have reached the final twice more, Exeter's last visit to Twickenham was in 2021 when they lost to Harlequins.

They have not made the play-offs since, with last season's ninth-placed finish their worst since reaching the top flight in 2010.

"For me, probably the disappointing thing is that we didn't maintain the rivalry to the level I'd have liked to have done post-Covid," says Baxter, whose side only need a draw to make next week's play-off semi-finals.

"We had to probably change the team to a higher degree and spend less to a higher degree, and that probably has put the rivalry on the back foot for three or four seasons.

"But it's nice to see that it's fully back in place now because what more could you want?

"The two of us fighting out for top four in the end of the season shows it's back on and these games are loaded and now it's up to us to take our opportunities more than Saracens take their opportunities."

Exeter were seen as one of the biggest victims of the salary cap scandal.

An investigation found Saracens owner Nigel Wray had business relationships with some of their top stars, which were not declared and would have taken them over the then-£7m salary cap.

Their star-studded side were the dominant force in English rugby, with Exeter a close second, and many Chiefs fans wonder what might have been had Saracens not been able to afford so many top players.

While the game is a regular-season fixture, the fact that the winners will end up in the play-offs means it is effectively the first knockout game between the sides since the scandal six-and-a-half years ago.

So does Baxter think there will still be lingering resentment around the fixture?

"I think everyone would want me to say yes, but I just don't think that's the case now," he says.

"I look at our team and we've got a couple of players involved, two or three, who were winning and losing finals around the time that the salary cap stuff was being investigated, but outside of that, that team's not on the field.

"The team that's on the field now is the team that's got to build its own reputation, it's got to build its own history, it's got to have its own successes and failures.

"I think the successes and failures of this Exeter team going forward aren't going to be based on Saracens' salary cap, they're going to be based on what we can do as a team.

"I think that's the bigger driver for the players now, and I think that's the way it should be

"Saracens' driver going forward is going to be winning things with a changed team that wasn't involved in that situation, so I think we're both very similar on that now."