Baxter reacts to Euro exit
By Mark Stevens
20/1/18
Disappointed Exeter Chiefs Director of Rugby Rob Baxter felt his side failed to grasp a golden opportunity to book themselves a place in the last eight of this season’s European Champions Cup.
Knowing they needed a victory ahead of their final Pool 3 clash with Glasgow Warriors, it was the Scotsmen who prevailed at an icy Scotstoun, claiming their first European victory of the season with a 28-21 success.
Full-back Stuart Hogg gave the home side the lead inside two minutes with a try converted by Finn Russell, but parity was restored just before the break when Exeter No.8 Sam Simmonds rumbled over from close range for a try of his own, which skipper Gareth Steenson was able to add the extras to.
The second half continued to be a tight affair, that was until Chiefs scrum-half Nic White was controversially shown a yellow card by French referee Romain Poite for a supposed deliberate knock-on close to his own try-line.
Not only did the Aussie international get banished to the sidelines for a ten-minute stint, but the Warriors were awarded a penalty try for his indiscretion.
Worse was to follow for the visitors as the Warriors exploited the man advantage to add two further converted tries from Tommy Seymour and Matt Fagerson.
With their Champions Cup hopes all but ended in an instance, the Chiefs dug deep late on and threatened a comeback of sorts as first Don Armand, then Ian Whitten, added late tries to haul them back to within a converted score.
Although the Chiefs did their best to try and rescue something in the dying embers, it was not to be and ended Exeter’s bid of joining Europe’s elite clubs in the quarter-finals.\
“I am disappointed, not just because we lost or because this European campaign has slipped away from us, but we weren’t as good as we needed to be,” said Baxter at the final whistle. “Playing in the Champions Cup, playing away to good sides, you know you have to be good and the truth is there were too many times today where we weren’t good enough.
“We conceded that early try and that was kind of indicative of where we were today. It was a pretty soft score, we didn’t talk, we didn’t number up, we kind of looked all over the place in those early minutes. However, we recovered well, we started to get into the game and by half-time I thought we were well placed.
“At 7-7, there have been plenty of games, even in this past month, where we have been level at half time, but then come through and won the game so I wasn’t too worried about that as we had laid some good foundations. Our scrum was looking good and on the whole our attacking shape looked pretty good, and I would normally have backed us to push on from there.”
The turning point came, however, when White was shown yellow and Baxter acknowledged it was a defining moment in the contest.
“The yellow card came at a crucial moment,” added Baxter. “But did we then deal with being down to 14 men that well? I don’t think we did.
“All of a sudden we were getting picked off by by Glasgow. Yes, some of it was good play from them, but if you are fully focused on how you should defend with 14 men, you should be able to deal with the threat. If we’re honest, we didn’t do that. We go caught on the edges a lot and if you are going to give up length of the field tries, you’re not going to win games.”
Asked by the media for his view on the yellow card, Baxter replied:“It’s tight. I’ve seen as many times as you did on the big screen. I also had a chat with Romain as we walked off and he acknowledged it’s a tight call as well.
“You can look at it over and over again and say there is nothing really happening and that it’s just a tackle scenario. At other times, you can say it looks like Glasgow were going to score. My feeling is I’m not sitting here massively bothered about the refereeing decisions, I’m more bothered about us. I think there was a lot more we could have done to keep things in our hands and that’s what has bothered me more than anything.”
