Chiefs focused on task ahead

By Mark Stevens
5/1/17

Exeter Chiefs may have made history last weekend with victory over Bath Rugby but Phil Dollman insists the quality within Aviva Premiership Rugby means they can’t afford to ease off for a second.

The Chiefs have made impressive progress since gaining promotion in 2010, reaching their first Aviva Premiership Rugby final last year.

However it took until the last day of 2016 for them to finally record victory over rivals Bath at the Rec in the competition, coming courtesy of two late tries from winger James Short.

That was enough to move them up to third in the table following their fifth straight league win.

But Dollman knows that, despite the win, there is still room for improvement, especially with the fact that they let Bath move into an initial 11-0 half-time lead.

And with champions Saracens next up on the horizon on Saturday, the Chiefs full-back revealed there had been a lot of important reflection over the course of this week.

“We can take a lot of confidence from the Bath game. We didn’t perform but we got the result. We know we can perform better than that,” he said.

“We’ve played a lot better than that and come out on the other end of results.

“This week is probably a good one to look at things. We got the win and that felt great. But when you analyse things, there’s a lot there to be improved on and that’s a good way to look at ourselves.

“I wouldn’t have said there’s been an easy game for a long time. It does seem like the quality of the Premiership has taken a step up in the last few years.

“We’re hopefully making that step up again ourselves, stepping on from last year and improving as do the other teams so we’ve just got to try and improve a little bit more.

“It’s a big test against Saracens, they’ve proven their quality already this year and previous seasons. It will give us a good indicator of where we are. We’ve improved the last five or six weeks so we can go there and see what we are about.”

Despite their recent run of form, Exeter will head to Allianz Park aware they have lost their last four encounters with Saracens, including last season’s Aviva Premiership Rugby final at Twickenham.

Their most recent defeat saw Saracens run in five tries in the 34-13 loss at Sandy Park in September and Dollman admits his team must not switch off again if they want to turn the tables on their opponents.

“It’s that 80 minute performance,” he said. “Whenever you play Saracens if you don’t put in an 80 minute performance you’re going to find it tough to get a good result against them because they go again and they are looking for errors off you all the time so we’ve got to be very clinical.

“If we can stop them playing our game, maybe we’ll get the ball back and launch against them and get on the front foot.

“They’ve got a strong kicking game with a strong chase but a lot of teams have in the league. We’ve got to front up to start with because if they get on us physically then you are in for a tough day. They played well against us last year, they really exposed us defensively so we’ve really got to be on our mettle.”