Ronan O'Gara: Are Exeter Chiefs the best team in world rugby right now?

Racing 92 has made serious progress in changing the culture of the team and club but do they have the game detail to match Exeter's?

Exeter Chief's Stuart Hogg dives in to score his sides third try during the Premiership semi-final last weekend. Hogg is perfectly suited to the rover role at full-back, where he has so much potential to express himself, says Ronan O'Gara. Picture: David Davies/PA Wire

FOR someone who (allegedly) claimed once that English players and clubs were over-hyped, how’s this for a leading question: Are Exeter Chiefs the form team in world rugby right now?

Those words are carefully chosen: best ‘ team’. Rob Baxter has spent over a decade at Sandy Park and seen his players triumph in every tier of English rugby. Alongside the old saying about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is an Exeter Chiefs crest.

Into a Premiership and a European Cup final, they’ve graduated into a formidable machine. Look at Ian Whitten, a lad who’s never really had a look-in with Ireland. But the Ulster centre is a seven- or eight-out of-10 every time he kits up for Exeter.

There’s a core of understated talents in that Chiefs set up who don’t sweat the showy stuff. What differentiates them so much is in the final 15 metres of the pitch where they are incredibly difficult to defend with their pick-and-go game. It’s their motif.

They have such massive trust in that aspect of their game. You face that and you take that little half-step not to concede the gain line and bang, it’s a penalty. And off they go again.

Is that better, or just different, to the flair, the individual gamechangers who will line up for Racing 92 in Saturday's Champions Cup final in Bristol? Look at every competition attack statistic and Virimi Vatakawa features either No 1 or thereabouts. Finn Russell is much the same.

Racing is nothing like the club I walked into in the summer of 2013. There is progress in every facet of the club, every crevice. But have they the detail to match Exeter’s game? It’s difficult for me to assess that impartially. Every game has its nuances, but it is hard to escape the fact that for a lot of people, the 2020 decider is ‘Trust- Belief-Values’ versus ‘X Factor’.

Let’s analyse that further.

This will be Racing’s third European Cup final and with every loss comes vital lessons. Well, we know it. There is a proper, robust framework now to their play, and a lot of the credit for that goes to Mike Prendergast, the attack coach. There is a different culture. The flakiness has largely been eradicated.

It’s three years next week since Racing came to Thomond Park and were scoreless for over an hour with Munster before Maxime Machenaud was blocked down for the lead try from Conor Murray. Small, incremental gains.

In the 2016 Top 14 final against Toulon in the Camp Nou in Barcelona, the same Machenaud was sent off after 18 minutes, yet Racing dug out at 29-21 against-the-odds victory. The squad has been working hard on the mental side of the game for quite a number of years now. It’s not something that would be high on the priority list for a lot of Top 14 clubs and that’s the change in culture I am referring to.

A moment of brilliance might have got Racing through the semi-final against Saracens, but they have made a lot of leaps with their consistency and this is a trophy they have targeted from a long way out. I needed to remind myself that Racing hasn’t won silverware since that Top 14 win four years ago and the club president Jacky Lorenzetti has made no secret that the Champions Cup is a priority for him. Internally, the playing group would admit this is the one they crave.

Developing a culture, a framework and a winning environment is so difficult in the Top 14 compared to, say, at a club like Exeter. In France, there are so many internationals from different countries all trying to create a positive environment. But with up to 10 players arriving and departing through a revolving door every summer, it is something they have to work constantly on and is the greatest challenge facing a Top 14 coach.

Which is why I will be keen to see confirmation of Racing 92’s XV on Friday. The big decision isn’t whether Teddy Thomas or Simon Zebo starts; nor whether Donnacha Ryan begins the game or is introduced.

The key is the selection or otherwise of Henry Chavancy, the heartbeat of the club. He’s been a Racing Metro man all his life, but he’s short of competitive match practice as he continues his recovery from a hamstring injury.

But he is the man they’d all play for on the day. He represents the best of the old and the new at Racing.

You need a tight group and a good environment to win a Top 14 title; you need a tight group, discipline, and detail to win a European Cup. Exeter tick all those boxes. Their roster may change but the core remains the same. They add a Hogg or a Jonny Gray here, a Vermeulen there, but it’s fine-tuning the engine, not rebuilding it.

That the final is at Ashton Gate is also a factor. It was set for Marseille. It’s a comfort blanket stripped away from Racing and its players. These are small things.

Speaking the same language with the hotel staff on the morning of the game. It might not have been their frontline XV but it’s only the end of August since Exeter were beating the Bristol Bears at Ashton Gate. They will feel entirely at ease with their surroundings on Saturday.

A European Cup final is the crème de la crème, where little things become big things. I hope the best of Racing 92 turns up locked and loaded but I know Exeter will be ready. They will bring precision to the final, even if it is their first. They are coming off a Premiership semi-final win too.

Though they would never lay claim to it, it’s a legitimate point: they might just be the form team in world rugby at the moment.

Not that they are without vulnerabilities, of course. Stuart Hogg is perfectly suited to the rover role at full back, where he has so much potential to express himself. He is devastatingly good going forward but there’s question marks the other way. If Simon Zebo or Juan Imhoff get one-on-one with him, that’s a bad scenario for Exeter.

Plus there’s the Vakatawa factor. 48 defenders beaten in the competition this year is the statistical tour de force I am referring to about the Racing centre. The next highest is Exeter’s Jack Nowell with 29.

If Exeter is the best team in world rugby, surely Virimi Vakatawa is the most lethal attacking weapon in the game alongside Bristol’s Semi Radradra?

Exeter’s game detail will challenge the French centre in every facet of the game. It is here that Prendergast will earn his corn in ensuring Vakatawa, Russell et al are given the opportunities to make yards. Winning is the icing, but it isn’t necessary to frank the strides Prendy has made as a coach. He is on everyone’s radar now — whether he would be up for a head coach role, I am not sure, but he loves teasing out the attacking side of the game and how to break down teams.

It could happen in the future but now he seems to have a great thing going at Racing where Laurent Travers is a great foil for him in terms of managing the group. Aboy Prawns!