Jack Nowell takes his time for success to sink in but Exeter Chiefs wing ready to start from the bottom and build up

The Exeter, England and British & Irish Lions wing tells Jack de Menezes why his mind is focused on getting back in the Chiefs shirt to reap the rewards all over again

Jack Nowell believes he must deliver again for Exeter this season in order to reap rewards with England (Getty)

Count this on your fingers. How many players last season won the Aviva Premiership, the Six Nations and drew the British and Irish Lions tour?

Remarkably, it is just one, and that is Jack Nowell. Given his big breakthrough with England came in the 2016 Six Nations, that is quite some achievement, but then it has been a bit of a whirlwind season for the homegrown Exeter Chiefs wing.

After Nowell started all five of England’s Grand Slam-winning Six Nations games in 2016, injury issues affected his chances of starting this year’s championship, and after being mooted as a Lions shoo-in, his hopes of making the tour of New Zealand were suddenly hanging in the balance.

Eventually though, Nowell found his form at the same time that Exeter hit their stride, and a virtuoso 16-match unbeaten streak carried the Chiefs to a first Premiership title, during which Nowell unsurprisingly made it over the whitewash.

Needless to say, the 24-year-old was riding a wave of momentum and just one day after helping to lift the trophy at Twickenham, the Cornwall native was in a taxi heading back to London to join the Lions squad. Once again forced his way into the reckoning, with Warren Gatland playing the wing in the second and third Tests, and it’s unsurprising when Nowell admits it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

“I’ve had a bit of time off, I was given five weeks off which was quite nice,” Nowell tells The Independent. “I’ve not really had that amount of time off since I started playing rugby so I managed to get away with my family, spend a good week away with them, managed to go on a bit of a holiday with the boys. I got a chance to celebrate it all, celebrate the whole year, but obviously now we’re back in pre-season it’s time to go again.

“It’s taken the whole five weeks to enjoy it and for it to sink in a bit. You can dwell on things, obviously it’s a massive achievement but if you carry on thinking about it then you’re not really moving forward and again it’s a big thing for us this year to keep moving forward.”

Exeter Chiefs open their defence of the Premiership title on Friday against Gloucester (Getty)

After such a successful year, it would be no surprise if Nowell found motivation this season somewhat hard to find. Exeter have risen from Premiership new boys to English champions, the national team remains back-to-back Six Nations champions and the next Lions tour is a demoralising three years and 10 months away.

That’s why the fan favourite is ready to set out his goals right back at the start of the curve, by focusing on all things Exeter, starting with their season-opening trip to Gloucester on Friday where Nowell starts among the replacements.


 Nowell had one evening to celebrate with Exeter before joining the Lions 
 (Getty)

“I’ve actually kept [my targets] really simple,” he adds. “I think the reason you get the successful stuff at the end is because of the stuff you do at the start and a big thing for me is performing well in an Exeter shirt and getting back into that routine, because if you do that you will deserve an England call-up and then after that you get to achieve stuff for England.

“First things first is to get a club shirt back on and play well for Exeter.”

But given the success that the south-west club are still able to enjoy from last season, at least among the fans if not the players, there could be a feel-good factor awaiting any visitors to Sandy Park.

“It’s been massive,” Nowell said of what the Premiership triumph has done for the surrounding area, both in Devon and nearby Cornwall. “I know I didn’t make it but I heard about the bus parade down there, it was mental, I think the whole of Exeter came out to see that. Exeter is a massive city but it’s a big rugby city as well and the support that we get from them is mental, so again it’s another thing that can drive us forward this year.”

It’s a sentiment that his director of rugby, Rob Baxter, is quick to echo, and he admits that there is now a strange scenario on the streets of the West Country where the line between sportsman and celebrity has become bizarrely thin.

“There’s so many people who would probably recognise you as a sportsperson in the area, they want to come and talk to you about the final, express how big it was seeing the local team doing well and winning a national competition, because as good as some of the sporting teams in our area have been, there isn’t a lot of national champions down there. You can talk about Devon and Cornwall as much as you like, but you’re going to struggle to talk about national champions and I think that’s been the big change, you’re not just going there and competing, you’re actually winning a national championship.


 Nowell featured in two tests for the Lions 
 (Getty)

“I felt it straight away. I’d walk down the street in Exeter and people would recognise me or beep car horns and wave out of car windows, that goes on all the time now.

“To be a celebrity you have to feel like you’re a celebrity, don’t you? There’s a lot of nice, very well-meaning, well-natured attention for people involved with Exeter Rugby Club at the moment. That’s got to be good, because at the end of the day we want to keep moving forwards as a rugby club.”