Distraught Henry Slade can take words of comfort from Saracens boss Mark McCall to help Exeter Chiefs make next step

England centre was close to tears after Exeter’s 37-34 Premiership final defeat, but all the signs point to the Chiefs moving in the right direction – and their biggest rivals know it

There were two sides of Exeter Chiefs’ Premiership final near-miss on Saturday. In the post-match press conference, as in the Twickenham stands, those associated to the club be it director of rugby, captain or supporter were left with their heads held high, proud in defeat after playing their role in arguably the greatest Premiership final ever seen.

But deep inside the bowels of the national stadium, there was a very different feeling residing within Exeter centre Henry Slade.

“It’s absolutely gutting. That's probably the worst I've ever felt after a game. We had them. We were on top of them for the whole game. I don't really know what to say, to be honest with you. Just bitterly disappointing.”

You could not help but feel for Slade and the rest of the Devonian side. With 20 minutes left to play it was Slade’s try that looked to have finally broken the Saracens backbone. Having won their last six major finals, Saracens were about to be knocked off their perch, only for the champion side to do what champion sides do best: find any way possible to win.

“That's not enough and it obviously wasn't,” added Slade. “We put ourselves in a great spot and we'd been playing really well. It's so frustrating. We never really got out of touch. We were so close but every time we got near to going two or three scores up they stayed in touching distance. It's a s*** feeling.”

It is why Saracens are forging a reputation that ranks among the very best European rugby has ever seen, but when Exeter licked their wounds and looked across the Twickenham tunnel to the celebrations in the away dressing room, there was one silver lining.

Of the closest finals in the last decade, not even Saracens’ back-to-back showdowns with Leicester Tigers nor the two extra-time finales won by Northampton and Exeter can rival Saturday’s epic battle, and it is a fact that this season, when the stakes have been at their highest, no other side has come as close to ending the Saracens final vice-grip.

Perhaps the best person for Slade and Co to listen to is the man responsible for Saracens’ era of domestic and European domination.

“When we lost in 2014 to Toulon and Northampton, we felt a bit sorry for ourselves for a couple of months,” said their director of rugby Mark McCall, shortly after becoming the most successful coach in Premiership history.

“Then it dawned on us that we’re actually just not good enough. We need to get better, we need to improve. The Gods aren’t against us, we need to get better. And we did. We worked really hard at the areas we needed to improve.

Henry Slade was dejected at full-time as Exeter lost the Premiership final against Saracens (Getty)

“(Exeter) were much better today than they were last year. The last three Premiership finals we’ve played in, we’ve got big half-time leads and Saturday was very different. They played really well. Despite the pain they feel, they’ll be really encouraged by how they took the game to us – and probably not being able to understand how we got it back. Small moments in these kind of games need to happen for them - which we got from the restarts which we got back, which kept us just about in the game. But they’ll be encouraged by a lot of their performance.”

The difference in 12 months for the Chiefs was visible for all to see, and not just on the scoreboard. Man for man, there were few, if any, Exeter Chiefs who came off second best against their opposite number, which made Saracens’ comeback all that more astounding to watch. But with Rob Baxter evidently going nowhere as he immediately turned attentions to getting back to Twickenham next season, and a young and talented squad that will only continue to get bigger, it feels the Chiefs time will eventually come.