From tears at Twickenham to displeasure in Devon, Exeter insist they are up for today’s revenge mission.

Chiefs are back at the home of English rugby where a year ago they lost their status of Premiership champions to Saracens.

Twelve months on and they continue to be driven by the despair they felt at being soundly beaten 27-10 having finished the regular season - as they have this time - eight points clear of the Londoners.

England star Henry Slade revealed that “a few of us boys sat down after that game and told ourselves we never wanted to feel like that again”.

Tom O'Flaherty scores for Chiefs against Castres during a memorable campaign (
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To that motivation has been added anger, with Rob Baxter reacting furiously this week to claims his team are ‘one-dimensional and boring’.

Chiefs’ boss took exception to Northampton counterpart Chris Boyd criticising his team’s playing style after being pounded 42-12 in their semi-final - and did not much care for England fly-half turned pundit Stuart Barnes branding them ‘boring’ either.

“Open your eyes and actually see,” said Baxter, blasting assessments of his team’s rugby based on what they do when five metres from the opposition line.

In the cross hairs: Northampton boss Chris Boyd... (
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...and England fly-half turned TV pundit Stuart Barnes (
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“Look outside that five metres if you really want to decide on how we play. There are 95 other metres on a rugby pitch, so if you want to talk about Exeter’s five metre game, let’s also talk about how we got there.

“We didn’t take a shot at goal in the semi-final and I think every other team did, whether it be a penalty or a drop goal. We didn’t. So who is the team playing with optimism?

“We actually don’t mind how we score a try. We don’t have one pre-determined way, we have a number of ways we go through it and if we score tries because we create five metre pressure, then we use that to score – fine. If we create 22 metre pressure and someone makes a break and we score – great.

Fired up: Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter (
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“How we get the momentum and create pressure on the opposition where they give away a penalty and we kick to the corner, I think they should be applauded.”

These are not isolated remarks from Baxter and Slade. Jack Nowell spoke of “all the boys upset, crying” after last year’s Twickenham loss and warned that “we haven’t worked so hard to put ourselves in this position to go and lose it again”.

And Ollie Devoto yesterday became the latest to volunteer that the cream of Devon will be using the past to try to shape their future.

Chiefs midfield star Ollie Devoto (
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“We’ve got last year’s final in the back of our heads,” he said. “The guys who were involved in that are certainly fired up for this one. They’re hurting inside. Using that for motivation.

“It’s knockout rugby at the end of the day and anything can happen in a final. We’re hugely up for it.”

Saracens, are odds-on favourites, Exeter men possessed.