{"id":109262,"date":"2025-05-17T14:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109262\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T14:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T14:47:09","slug":"exeter-chiefs-draft-in-ex-england-international-following-coaching-upheaval-planet-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109262\/","title":{"rendered":"Exeter Chiefs draft in ex-England international following coaching upheaval : Planet Rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exeter Chiefs have confirmed the appointment of England U20s assistant Dave Walder as the club\u2019s new attack coach with immediate effect.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The news comes following the departure of Ali Hepher, who left his post by mutual consent yesterday.<\/p>\n

Dave Walder joins Exeter Chiefs coaching staff<\/p>\n

Former England fly-half Walder began his coaching career with Newcastle Falcons, serving as head coach for eight years, before later joining Bristol Bears as senior back and skills coach.<\/p>\n

He has also recently been a part of the England U20s set-up under Mark Mapletoft, alongside current Chiefs<\/a> defence coach Haydn Thomas.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the news, Walder said:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m really excited to have the opportunity to come down to the Chiefs to work with a really talented group of players as well as a young, dynamic coaching group.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI can\u2019t wait to get started. I\u2019m looking forward to working with this squad. It\u2019s obviously been a really tough year for them results-wise, but the green shoots of growth are there, so I\u2019m excited to work with the group moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be good to get them playing attacking rugby, scoring some tries and helping to get Chiefs back to where they belong, which is at the top, competing for trophies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chiefs director of rugby, Rob Baxter<\/a>, added: \u201cWe\u2019re delighted that Dave has decided to join the club and it\u2019s particularly good news that he\u2019s been able to start immediately to help oversee this weekend\u2019s game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve known Dave a long time, and I really appreciate the work he put in for a lengthy period at Newcastle. I thought he did a fantastic job there with relatively limited resources. He always brought out the best in the group that he had working with him.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMore recently, he\u2019s been working with some of our England U20 players, and those guys have only had positive things to say about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic for us to have someone of his experience and capabilities joining us. Hopefully he\u2019ll take us forward with our attacking game and how we want our backs to play. With him coming on board, we\u2019re really looking forward to getting on with the remainder of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Opinion: Exeter Chiefs call for the return of Caesar to resurrect \u2018besieged empire\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exeter Chiefs have confirmed the appointment of England U20s assistant Dave Walder as the club\u2019s new attack coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,49761,393,6874,4884,225,12,6875,25808,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-109262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dave-walder","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-exeter-chiefs","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-premiership","16":"tag-rob-baxter","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114523723717935277","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}