Who’s hot and who’s not: Rob Baxter’s ‘wondrous’ redemption, Santiago Carreras’ lack of ‘bottle’ and Cam Roigard’s ‘sour taste’
Rob Baxter, left, celebrates Exeter's PREM Rugby semi-final win but it's despair for Bath's Santiago Carreras
It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.
THEY’RE ON FIRE!
Rob Baxter: What a way for the veteran Exeter boss to celebrate his wedding anniversary, whipping his top off and joining in with his team’s unbridled joyous dressing room celebration following their stunning comeback win over the fancied Bath. So bad were the Chiefs in recent years that there was speculation the 2019/20 double-winning coach should be handed his jacket and ushered out through the exit.
Baxter had too much Exeter DNA for that to be the unceremonious outcome, and his canny rebuild has qualified his team for next weekend’s PREM Rugby final. His role over the course of the season has been worth its weight in gold, but the feel he had during the game last Saturday was wondrous, altering momentum by taking off his struggling left winger in the first half and then his entire front-row early in the second to limit the damage from a then dominant Bath to 26-10 and ignite the riveting 26-27 victory. It was a masterclass in bench use and trusting in plan B.
Tom Litchfield: When Northampton clinched only their second ever PREM Rugby title in 2024, it was South African Burger Odendaal who filled their No.13 jersey, forging a midfield partnership with Fraser Dingwall that helped to get the club into the winners’ enclosure. Two years later, it’s Litchfield who is firing the imagination on Dingwall’s shoulder, and last Friday’s first-half hat-trick was crucial in his team’s deserved 45-31 semi-final dismissal of neighbours Leicester.
So many other Northampton talents have their names up in lights, but the 24-year-old has made the outside centre position his own, qualifying this season all the promise shown in last term’s breakthrough campaign. His physicality in repeatedly crossing the gain line has added a delicious layer to Saints’ attacking prowess, and a delight was his tries versus Tigers being all different. There was a run-in from outside the 22, then opportunism in taking advantage at the line of a defensive gaffe, and he finished off his repertoire with a lovely step and then power through the contact from close range. The coming-of-age boy certainly can play!
Kyren Taumoefolau: Moana Pasifika may have gone bust in recent weeks, but they will still leave a legacy in the game if they are not rescued. For example, it was at the start-up franchise where Taumoefolau earned his stripes in the pro ranks and having contributed to their best season in 2025, his reward was a two-year deal at the Chiefs and you could see exactly why they snapped him up with just 15 minutes played in last Friday’s Super Rugby semi-final.
Having defeated the Chiefs in last year’s final in Christchurch, the Crusaders would have travelled to Hamilton fully believing they could win the semi-final rematch, but the home team’s 23-year-old winger had different ideas with his two early tries. His first owed everything to the premise of staying patient, hugging the touchline and the ball will come, but the second highlighted his ability to improvise, brilliantly kicking on Cortez Ratima’s kick through to scatter the defence and win the race to the bobbling ball at the line. Lovely stuff.
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Racing 92: The Parisians were beaten by 10 points when they visited Pau near the end of March, but the tables were definitely turned in Saturday’s play-off rematch which ended with the fifth-place side ejecting the fourth-place team from the play-offs with a 33-31 upset win. It was a success that owed everything to a power surge ignited approaching the interval and continuing into the early part of the second half as 23 points were scored in 17 minutes to transform a 17-10 deficit into a 17-33 lead that ultimately was just about enough to ward off Pau’s late comeback. Whereas Racing, for quite some time, spent big on household names and didn’t deliver, they are now more of a team of equals and that togetherness was evident in their determination to cling on to their victory.
Theirs was the ultimate team win, and the players were especially collectively gutsy when ignoring coaching calls from the sideline to kick a penalty that they instead tapped and scored a try from. That was brave. We must also single out Demba Bamba for his 53-minute try assist. Pau spilled the ball on their 10 and the prop was alertness personified, picking up, throwing a dummy to ignite his gallop and then producing the sweetest offload out of the tackle in the 22 for Léo Carbonneau to score. Tasty.
Harvey Skinner: Chiefs had plenty of heroes at The Rec and while in the Baxter segment above, we have lauded the director of rugby’s use of replacements to strategically alter the PREM Rugby semi-final’s momentum, there were also loads of stand-out players who started the match. In the pack, Greg Fisilau, Tom Hooper and Andrea Zambonin were relentlessly effective.
Midfielder Henry Slade also deserved kudos for getting over his terrible beginning to the game, the yellow card that contributed to his team falling 14-3 behind. His response was superfluous, but fly-half Skinner was the ultimate difference maker for the energetic way he directed traffic from the 10 position, going to the line and getting Exeter firing. Some players don’t immediately have what it takes to make it in pro rugby, but the 28-year-old is another example of why coaches must show patience with certain talents that take longer to mature. Skinner is now in his prime and loving it.
Paul Gustard: A potentially marvellous renaissance is brewing for the coach on the other side of the English Channel after he fashioned Stade Francais’ brilliant 45-5 hammering of La Rochelle in the French play-offs to book a semi-final versus Montpellier in Marseille. Let’s just say that the Gustard’s time in charge at Harlequins – his last job at home – isn’t fondly remembered and it was quite a devastating kick to the chops that following his abrupt exit, the Londoners threw caution to the wind to become PREM Rugby title winners in 2021.
Eddie Jones’ former Test-level assistant moved to the continent to repair the damage, initially soothing his Quins wound as a Benetton assistant in Italy before switching to the Top 14 where he has found his niche at Stade despite regular links with roles back home. The head coach position at Stade Jean Bouin has certainly suited him, and the transformation from last term’s 12th-place finish with just 10 wins to third spot with 15 wins and a draw has been excellent to see, restoring his reputation as a coach with clout. Adding intrigue to this revival is how well Joe Marchant, his ex-Harlequins midfielder, is playing under him, scoring two tries on Sunday.
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Hurricanes: How many times have we seen a team that has breezed through the regular part of a league season come a cropper in the play-offs? All too often, as Bath can attest to in England following the PREM Rugby semi-finals. In New Zealand, the ‘Canes finished the recent Super Rugby Pacific season 17 points and three wins better off than the Blues, but there were some tough questions asked in a first half in Wellington that ended with the favourites only five points up at the break and in need of a reassuring Clark Laidlaw pep talk.
Those wise words proved a tonic as the title fancies returned to ‘win’ the second half by a lopsided 38-7, a six-try dominance in which Blues’ sole try in reply only arrived in the dying minutes. The Hurricanes had three of those tries on the board within 13 second-half minutes, zipping into an uncatchable 38-14 lead, and the variety in the attack stood out. They scored off a turnover, first-phase scrum ball and then a cheeky, well-worked crosskick move in a surge to victory that was very entertaining to watch.
Perpignan: The Catalan club is very much the Houdini of French rugby. For the fourth time in five seasons, they finished 13th in the Top 14, and for the fourth time in five seasons, they went on to win the play-off against the beaten finalists from the Pro D2. Provence were this year’s opposition, brutally getting outmanoeuvred at their own Stade Maurice David.
The hosts were 10-0 up when Perpignan copped a 20-minute red but rather than prospering, Provence flopped, quickly conceding two yellow cards and four tries in the match-deciding spell either side of the interval – two tries going to sub forward Peceli Yato. That left them down 28-10, and the full-time result was 47-24. Perpignan, of course, were delighted to succeed again in this so-called Access Match, but perhaps it’s now time for them to finally build a team and avoid a fifth play-off in six years this time next year.
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COLD AS ICE!
Santiago Carreras: Bath boss Johann van Graan was magnanimous in the aftermath of Saturday’s spectacular PREM Rugby semi-final setback, claiming he was backing his team for the decision to stick with the pick and go rather than attempt a drop goal in the 41-phase play that ended with the 2025 champions held up over the line and beaten. Those words, though, can’t keep the Argentine back out of the firing line. Filling in at 10 in the absence of the injured Finn Russell, he had a sole remit: to get his team through to the Twickenham final, and he failed miserably.
Rather than getting into position to fire over the winning kick from in front of the posts, Carreras bottled this responsibility and was even seen to suffer from white line fever at one stage in the last stand, racing onto the ball in a failed attempt to score a try. Some of rugby’s most iconic moments are late drop goal winners: the 2003 World Cup final, the 2009 Six Nations Grand Slam match, the 2022 PREM final. There is no other description: it was a shocking dereliction of duty for Carreras not to take charge of the Bath emergency and kick his team through to the decider.
Cam Roigard: The swashbuckling scrum-half is a regular feature in this column’s ‘On Fire’ section, so to have him demoted to the ‘Cold As Ice’ part is quite a dramatic fall-off in fortunes. The Kiwi has insisted he wasn’t ‘milking it’ when lying on the ground with the Super Rugby semi-final halted following his aerial collision with Beauden Barrett, but his sudden Lazarus-like return to his feet and quick tap was a dark arts ploy that he has rightfully encountered an avalanche of criticism for.
We all love to see speed of thought creating space in rugby, but this was a ridiculous example. The Blues had switched off, showing concern for the prone Roigard, who seemed in need of medical treatment following an incident that could well have resulted in a Barrett yellow card for foul play. Referee Ben O’Keeffe didn’t cover himself in glory by not calling back Roigard following the quick tap and the try the play resulted in left a sour taste in the mouth.
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Crusaders: Rugby lost two defending champions at the semi-final stage at the weekend, but the eliminations were very different. Bath relinquished their PREM Rugby title grip in a one-point loss that would have been a win if they had a fly-half with the balls to kick a drop goal, but it was embarrassing how Crusaders let go of their Super Rugby champions mantle, losing 49-12 at the Chiefs.
They humiliatingly never had a sniff, trailing 42-5 at the break following a first-half that left so much to be desired. Admittedly, the Crusaders have been inconsistent this term, winning just eight of their 14 regular-season matches. But getting thumped six tries to one in the first half against an opposition you defeated 36-32 three weeks earlier at home was a terrible look, and the critics weren’t slow to boot Rob Penney on the backside on his way out with the reins now going to Scott Hansen.
Pau: Stade du Hameau was supposed to be one of the toughest stadiums to go to in rugby, but the French club’s run of 13 home wins in 13 league matches this season was proven to be meaningless in Saturday’s Top 14 play-off loss to Racing. Rather than being remembered as a fortress, it is now seen as a place where a club trying to win its first Bouclier de Brennus since 1964 blinked when it mattered most.
Pau only conceded seven penalties in the play-off, the same as their Parisian opposition, but they paid an incredibly heavy price for their indiscretions as Racing kicked four penalties for 12 points to Pau’s one kick for three, and the visitors also scored a try from a tap five metres out. This clinical, take-your-points, cup rugby attitude was the difference on the night in a match where two points were the difference between the teams. It was a hard lesson for the Sébastien Piqueronies-coached team.
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