The Scottish influence at Exeter has been increasingly pronounced in recent years, with Stuart Hogg, Jonny Gray, Sam Skinner and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne all playing their part in the rise to that Premiership and Champions Cup double.
For longevity, however, none of this lot has anything on Craig Townsend, the older brother of Scotland coach Gregor, who has been involved with the Chiefs for some 22 years; all the way back to a time when they were not even called that and had rather less grandiose ambitions.
Townsend, an attack-minded outside centre who won the 1999 Scottish Cup with Gala in the same midfield as Chris Paterson, was a professional player at the club before taking over the strength and conditioning side when Matt Taylor, the former Glasgow and Scotland defence coach, was turning out at flanker.
Townsend then ran the RFU’s southwest academy, covering Exeter, Plymouth Albion and Cornish Pirates, worked with a number of up-and-coming Chiefs, including Skinner, as high performance sport manager at the University of Exeter and is now a player development manager for the Rugby Players Association (RPA) with responsibility for the Sandy Park outfit and Gloucester.
He knows exactly where Exeter have come from, and where they want to go next. “I can remember being in the club the evening the members voted to move to the new ground,” he said. “I was still academy manager when they played their first game at Sandy Park, and one of my academy lads, Tom Bedford, played on the wing.
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“It’s phenomenal what they’ve done and built on and off the pitch through [chief executive and chairman] Tony Rowe and the coaching staff. And the great thing is they still want to grow and win things. The aim is to be even more successful, to win things over and over again. It’s fantastic to be involved in that.”
Hogg and Gray are two very different players, two very different people, but both have found an ideal match in Devon. Hogg, the Scotland captain, has various business interests and is showing how it is possible to combine sporting excellence with laying foundations for the future.
“I can see he is quite an inspiration to some of the younger lads who are starting out in businesses,” Townsend said. “He’s quite happy to share things and tell the lads the importance of having something else besides rugby in your life. It’s nice to have another Borders guy around the place, but being a Hawick man, he always reminds me that I’m from Gala, and that we are not the same.
“Jonny is a supremely hard-working individual. I’ve only known him for just over a year, but I can see the work-rate he puts in on the pitch and he does the exact same off the pitch as well. That’s the sort of attributes [director of rugby] Rob Baxter looks for. They are very similar characters. I’m sure Rob has seen a lot of himself in Jonny. It’s an ideal fit, and to see him scoring a few tries last week [Gray landed a hat-trick in the 42-6 win over Montpellier] alongside another workhorse like Dave Ewers, the coaching staff will have been very pleased with that.
“To do that two games back [after shoulder surgery] shows how Jonny has treated his rehab, how hard and smart he has worked in that period.”
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Townsend expects a close contest at Scotstoun this evening, and would not be at all surprised if it goes down to the wire like the 31-31 draw there in January 2020 when Hogg hit the crossbar with a last-minute penalty.
“I think it will be quite a confrontational game,” he said. “Glasgow last week nearly took the result away at La Rochelle. They played really well, and they have just about a Scotland pack. That will be where the game is won and lost. With Jonny and Sam Skinner in there, it’s not quite a Scotland trial, but there are a lot of interesting match-ups for the Scottish coaches to watch. It will be good.”
Townsend is a talented golfer, and once played the Scottish Amateur Championship with his younger sibling — there are two years between them — as his caddie. “That’s the only reason I got to the fourth round,” he laughed. “Walking to the first tee, the guys I was playing against were clearly thinking, ‘hang on, is that Gregor?’ They were already three down before I teed off!”
The pair still get a game when they can, most recently at Leven’s Dumbarnie Links in the summer, where they halved. Craig plays off one, Gregor off seven. “He’s pretty good,” Townsend said. “Like any professional coach or athlete, he wants to win. He’ll have a wry smile on his face going round, but you can always see that he’s absolutely determined to win. He has the skills and the attitude: if he had a bit more time, he’d be playing off a good bit lower than that, I reckon.”
Townend, who used to be team manager for England Sevens, is proud of the way his brother has bounced back from the gut-wrenching disappointment of the 2019 World Cup by altering a previously one-dimensional game-plan to make Scotland a tougher proposition.
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“They’re a resilient bunch now and playing more of an all-court game,” he said. “Their defence is a massive strength now. If you look at November, even though South Africa are world champions and the No 1 team in the world, it was only in the last 20 minutes that they got on top. That shows you where Scotland are — not far away at all. They have a bright future and hopefully they can push on in the Six Nations.
“It was a tough World Cup in Japan. You’re always up against it when you’re playing the hosts in any sport. But they’ve shown in the last two years what they can do in the Six Nations. Three or four years ago they never won away from home, so to go from that to beating England and France, two of the top four in the world . . . hardly any Scottish team has ever done that. It was a massive step forward.”
Townsend’s own role has been reshaped by the pandemic. Only recently has he been able to get back to Sandy Park and Kingsholm to see players in person, and the past two years have seen an increased demand for pastoral support as players struggle with all manner of uncertainty, not least in a rapidly-contracting marketplace as far as contracts are concerned.
“Every month we called round every player to see how they were getting on and what support they required,” he said. “Likewise, I had a few calls from players wanting to do some education online. They hadn’t really made that effort before, but realised they had some time to get started. We were involved from a trade union side of things as well, because there was massive uncertainty there too. To be there as a sounding board and that safety blanket, I think the players really valued that.
“They are just a bunch of normal people whose job happens to be in sport. Outwith that, they’ve all got different interests and passions and they all want to do different things. A few lads had ideas for businesses, and we got them kicked off then launched properly when things opened up again. Others did online courses and that was a major release for them.
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“It got to a point where over 90 per cent of players were what we class as actively engaged in personal development or professional development away from rugby. That’s fantastic, and lots of them are starting at an early age. I’ve a couple of guys in their early 20s starting businesses and that shows it can be done.
“They’ve got a tough full-time job but to have something away from rugby can give them a focus and a release. Pro sport is such a pressurised environment and to have a means of getting away from that is massively beneficial.”
