As he speaks about the most successful season in his club's history and the vital part he played in it, the note of pride is ever-present in Joe Simmonds' voice. By his own admission, he still has not fully processed the accomplishment, 18 months on from his last-minute penalty which sealed victory in the European Champions Cup final.
"I grew up watching European finals – Jonny Wilkinson winning it all with Toulon," he told Mirror Sport . The 25-year-old referred to the French club's back-to-back successes in 2013 and 2014, in which the legendary England kicker had played a major role in the twilight years of his great career.
"Never in a million years did I think I'd have the opportunity to play in one. I think it will be when I finish my career that I will look back on it. Hopefully I will win more, but the first one.. definitely I'll be pinch myself and think: 'How the hell did we do that?'."
Not only was it Simmonds' first taste of European glory, but the same was true for the club that he has dedicated his entire career to so far. Exeter Chiefs had conquered the domestic game, finding their footing in the top-flight in the early 2010s before really emerging as a dominant force in the 2015/16 season. In each of the six campaigns since, they have either won the trophy or been Premiership runners-up.
But for all that success on a domestic level, the Devon-based club had never quite found the right formula on the continental stage. A run to the quarter-finals in 2016 was the best they had managed in the Champions Cup, until Exeter reached the promised land in 2020 amid unprecedented difficulties for all parts of society.
The pandemic disrupted almost all parts of life, including the rugby season which, like so many other sports, grinded to a halt. As was the case with football, there were genuine concerns that the season might be curtailed altogether. But that thought was never allowed to cross the minds of those in Exeter colours. That mentality, Simmonds maintains, played a major role in their success that year.
"It was such an odd season for everyone with Covid – no fans and half of the time being at home and doing your own stuff," he explained. "Looking back it was a weird time, but as players and coaching staff we always knew the games were going to be played and we had got ourselves into a position where we were in the top four in the Premiership and the knockout rounds of Europe.
"It was for us individually to make sure that, when we weren't at the club, we were training hard and getting ourselves into a state to come back and play these tough games. A huge part of our success is just how hard we worked outside of training to get ourselves into a prime state."
Even when the action was able to resume later in the year, playing in front of empty stadiums was not what anyone wanted. Not having their fans around to cheers them on was "difficult", but did have a perhaps unexpectedly positive effect. "It definitely made us tighter as a group going forward," the fly-half said. "We were able to just finish the finals and sit in the changing room with a beer and reflect on these times together."
At the end of that season, a date with Wasps loomed as the Chiefs aimed to become Premiership champions for the second time in four years, while simultaneously hoping to make up for back-to-back final defeats in the previous two seasons. But a week before that, it was a short journey to Bristol to take on French side Racing 92, who had tasted defeat in two previous finals since 2016.
The last-minute penalty kick which Simmonds nailed to secure the victory will go down in the club's history, but the player himself remembers it as a bizarre moment as well as an iconic one. "In the European final, there was a weird ending to the game because I had a kick, and I could have taken the whole time but I saw in the corner of my eye that the clock wasn't moving," he said with a chuckle.
"I didn't want to change my routine, and I knew in the back of my head that time was up and I needed to make the kick. I think there were fans in the Ashton Gate bar who were watching it, and they must have heard it first on the telly that the game was up and I could hear the fans cheering in the bar and thought 'surely there isn't 100 French fans in Ashton Gate. So I knew before the final whistle was blown that he had won the European final."
That successful kick maintained his perfect record in that final, and helped the captain on the day to be the top points scorer in the entire competition that year. His elder brother, Sam, also came out of the tournament with the best try-scoring record – making the Champions Cup a real family affair for the Teignmouth clan.
"I didn't know that I was top points scorer until after the final whistle in the final – it's not something I would look into and worry about too much. But obviously that is a huge bonus," Joe admitted. "To even have the opportunity to captain the side – I was 23 at the time – is something that would never think I was capable of doing.
"For the coaches to give me the opportunity was huge, and it's something that will live with me forever. I had such experienced players around me who made that job so much easier, loads of internationals in that squad. If I have kids one day, it's definitely something I'll look back on and I'm sure they will be proud. For me it's just a 'c' next to my name – it doesn't change how I play, and it doesn't change how the other players look at me."
Things have arguably never been so good for Exeter. Their Sandy Park stadium is growing, with a new stand helping to increase the matchday capacity and a £25m hotel under construction on lands nearby. Success on the pitch is helping to drive growth off it.
Not everything is rosy. There is still a way to go until the ground reaches the 20,000 capacity threshold to host matches in the latter stages of European tournaments. The biggest issue has been the club's branding – a lengthy review process has been taking place behind the scenes after accusations that its use of Native-American imagery and chants could be seen as offensive appropriation.
Following in the footsteps of NFL franchise Washington, which dropped its Redskins name after facing similar pressure, Exeter announced in January that its Native American branding will be dropped at the end of the current season and replaced with a nod to the Iron Age Dumnonii Tribe, which populated those parts of south west England long before the Romans settled there 2,000 years ago.
"A lot of people come to us and say: 'You're slowly getting back to where Exeter were back in the day – the old Exeter', but we want to be a new Exeter," Simmonds said defiantly of the current state the club is in. "We don't want to be the same team we have been the last six years, we want to be better. We're different now, and have things that are exciting not just on the pitch but off it as well. We can see that we're moving forward as a club."
On the pitch, Exeter remain in contention for the Premiership, domestic cup and European glory as well. Thoughts of a treble would most likely feel premature to most, even with only two months left of the current campaign. Some teams might see the idea of success on multiple fronts as a distraction, but Simmonds believes it can help to inspire his team-mates to produce their very best in pursuit of their goals.
""When we won it, [the double] is all we spoke about – that's what got us to winning the trophies I think, because we were so confident that we were going to do it," he explained. "We're in a position [this season] that we have the opportunity to be in these finals, and we'll definitely take it. We're all ready for the challenge and excited.
""A successful season would be winning silverware. We've been in the last six Premiership finals and won two. For us, it's probably not a success to not be winning trophies, so we want to be making sure we do win a trophy this year, so we can look back and call it a good season. We're definitely going for a treble, but we'll see what happens."
"I know we've got the team to beat anyone on our day. Potentially, sometimes we think that we should win games, but the last five or six weeks we've moved away from that. I think that might be why we started so poorly, because we came off getting to the finals thinking things are going to happen. You can't do that this year because the fight for the top four is huge, you can't think like that or you will be beaten. Every game is a final now."
Watch Rugby Stories, a new documentary series airing every Friday on BT Sport around the thirteen clubs in the 2021/22 Gallagher Premiership. The series continues with ‘Devon Double’ the story of Exeter Chiefs in 2020, on Friday 25 March at 10pm on BT Sport 2. For more information visit bt.com/sport
