I don't know where the Gilbert bit comes from, I've only ever seen him down as Hendrikson in the past. He's a Newlyn bred lad who joined Exeter Academy (via Truro College) in was DRd back to Pirates in 2013 (IIRC). He's had significant game time for Pirates and latterly for Chiefs in the Anglo-Welsh and A-League. I can't say as I've seen him play all that much, but he's a biggish lad with a fair set of wheels.
The party line would that Chiefs are sat pretty - in a better place than they were this time than they were last season when they won the whole thing. It's too early for the current table to be too indicative of the quality of the opposition faced, but for what it's worth, the 4 wins and 2 losses have come against teams placed 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th in the table, which makes things sound less impressive given that the remaining 5 games of the first half of the season will be against the (current) 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th placed teams in the league.
My gut feeling is that Chiefs will make the playoffs again - not exactly a brave (no pun intended) prediction I know, but would need a the stars to really align for them (both in terms of things going right for them and wrong for the opposition) to win the whole thing again. The cynic / pessimist in me has me questioning whether that happened last year. I'm pretty sure that the problems with the squad have already been highlighted in this thread and elsewhere on the forums, but just to reiterate:
- Yeandle's form is a long was off where it was a few seasons back meaning that LCD is a big loss when he's out and when he's there there's little in the way of impact off the bench.
- Given that the predicted Kvesic renaissance is yet to happen, the off season signings and departures have weakened the side, with Nic White being the only new signing to make an impact thus far.
- Following on from that, the loss of Parling and Welch has left things pretty threadbare in the second row.
- Full back was a worry last year with Turner never looking particularly convincing, nothing much seems to have been done about this.
- One thing that might not have been touched upon, I worry about Steenson picking up a knock (and about the future after him).
Given all that he has done for the club and the success he has brought to the club, it's hard to throw stones at Rob Baxter, but the lack of off season signings (despite room in the cap and money to spend) might be indicative of a stubborn insistence in doing things his way / the Exeter way rather than adapting to the situation the club is now in (I'd call it Arsene Wenger syndrome, but knowing very little about soccerball, I could be missing something). The club have sufficient versatile players that even injuries in the positions that I perceive as crucial can be covered, but not without weakening the team significantly. For example, losing Steenson would presumably mean Slade to 10, but that would mean losing one of the form players in the league in his position moving out of the 13 shirt into one he's only ever flirted with. I imagine that Baxter is conscious of only recruiting players who hit with his style and the club's culture, but I can't help thinking that swallowing some pride and grabbing the best available to cover my perceived weaknesses would leave the club in a stronger position. Similarly, while the policy of remaining loyal to players has obvious upsides in terms of consistency and team spirit, I wonder if the squad is starting to reflect the downsides to this policy - having ageing and / or injury prone players high up the pecking order in their position.
Should injuries in the key positions I list be avoided and the opposition have an off day or suffer their own key injuries (what I meant by the stars aligning), Chiefs could retain their ***le, but on this basis I'd want a fairly long price on it happening.
On the other hand (and to show that I'm not the total prophet of doom that I realise this post must make me appear) and looking at things from another perspective, there's a good chance that Saracens will top the table with Chiefs in second this time around. Should Exeter make an early exit from Europe and Saracens go deep once again, Chiefs would have a home semi-final and likely final against a Saracens team fighting on two fronts.
with ewers on the bench. Alot of power there
