Henry Slade snapped a ball clean out of his own hands in the first half and earned a sin bin for it—a moment of uncharacteristic desperation that might have sunk a lesser team. But when the 33-year-old England centre returned to the field at Bath on Saturday, he carried with him something more valuable than timing or reflexes: the unmistakable belief that comes from having been there before. Exeter Chiefs, third-placed underdogs facing a 26-10 deficit against Bath in the Premiership semi-final, needed exactly that. And Slade delivered it.
The historic comeback that followed—a 27-26 victory that sent Exeter to the Premiership final as the first third-placed side ever to reach one—cannot be separated from the quiet authority of a man who has lived Exeter's brightest days and survived its darkest. Slade, who won 74 England caps and played in the 2019 World Cup final, was there during the club's golden run: six successive Premiership finals from 2016 to 2021, with trophy wins in 2017 and 2020, plus a European Champions Cup triumph in 2020. More importantly, he was still there when that era collapsed.
When Covid-19 tightened financial realities, the architects of that success scattered. Jack Nowell, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Sam Simmonds, Stuart Hogg—the names that defined modern Exeter rugby—departed. A stream of new faces arrived, but the wins didn't follow. Consecutive seventh-place finishes gave way to ninth place last season, a nadir so complete that Exeter recorded their worst-ever top-flight campaign: just four wins, their heaviest loss ever, and the kind of year that tests whether a club's identity survives its talent.
Through it all, Slade remained. And on Saturday, when the momentum should have belonged entirely to Bath, his mere presence on the field seemed to shift something in his teammates' thinking. Rob Baxter, Exeter's boss, didn't credit him for the try-scoring heroics or the defensive stops—though Slade's influence touched both. Instead, Baxter highlighted something harder to manufacture: the contagious certainty of experience. "When you've been there, you understand you can do things," Baxter told BBC Sport. "When you've come from behind before you understand you can do things, when you've won Premiership finals you understand you can do it, you don't limit yourself from what you can achieve. I think he's just helping the lads believe that as well."
That belief now carries Exeter to Twickenham next Saturday to face Northampton Saints in the final. But for Baxter, the victory's deeper meaning lies in redemption for the newer arrivals—players like Scott Sio, the former Australia prop brought in to help build something special, only to endure the club's worst season. "For him to go on the back of playing in the winning semi-final, now playing in the Premiership final," Baxter said, "these guys haven't experienced what a great Premiership season feels like and they're feeling it now." Christ Tshiunza and Rusi Tuima, fellow relative newcomers, suddenly know what excellence tastes like. For departing players, the final offers a chance to end their Exeter story not with a whimper, but with the kind of memory that lasts. That's what Slade's sin bin couldn't take away.