Baxter's joy at winning start
By Mark Stevens
22/9/19
Rob Baxter praised his Exeter Chiefs side after they kicked off their new season with a 28-14 victory over Bath at Sandy Park.
Converted first half tries from Tom Wyatt, Tom Hendrickson and Olly Woodburn gave the Devon club a 21-0 lead at the turn - and although Bath countered with scores of their own through Levi Davis and Chris Cook in the second half, the Chiefs ensured it was maximum reward in this opening round of the Premiership Rugby Cup with a late try from replacement Barrie Karea.
Not surprisingly, Baxter was quick to highlight the achievements of his young side, which come the final whistle had paraded nine debutants.
“You are always really pleased with a win,” he said. “To get the bonus point as well, it keeps us alive in the first competition of the season. It was a good performance, especially first half, and although the boys looked leggy in the second half - and it was the same for Bath - it’s kind of what you expect when a lot of players go 80 minutes for their first game.
“Overall, I thought we came through really well. In particular, I was really pleased with Jannes Kirsten on his debut. I thought he really stood out today in a lot of what he did. Also, the youngsters did really well. Sam Maunder had a lot of influence on the game, Hendo had an important game, Max Bodilly looked elusive, and our young front-row were outstanding when they were on the pitch. They gave us a foothold into the game and there were lots of positives to take from our first game.”
Roared on by a crowd in the region of 10,000, Baxter said the experience of playing in front of so many people for many of those youngsters would be a valuable lesson moving forward.
“It’s been a good day for all those young players,” he continued. “We’ve worked a lot with these lads during the off season, but there is only so much you can do with them in terms of training and looking at video. Now, we can sit down with them and spend some genuine time going through their game.
“The truth is, you can spend more time working off the field than you can with them on it, but there is some genuinely good stuff for us to work with. The level of performance they showed was right up there, but I think even in this next week alone we can see them go up another level in performance, which will be incredible.
“Most of them will be involved again this week [against Leicester], so they’ve got a short turnaround to get recovered, get a good review in on Monday and, hopefully, come Friday we will be a better team again.”
In what was a decent first work-out for the Chiefs, they showed some real spark in attack, but defensively they were also just as impressive for large parts of the contest.
Baxter added: “The nicest thing about defence is it’s the biggest indicator of attitude that you can have - and I thought that part was fantastic. There were times today where we had to work very hard for long periods and it’s only when we got a bit tired, we missed a couple of tackles on the edge that allowed Bath back in.
“They were just missed tackles, not system breakdowns, so it wasn’t like things were falling apart. Moving forward, we’ve just got to make sure those individual moments stick, but that’s some we can address in our review process this week.”