'We lacked intensity' - Baxter

 

By Mark Stevens
21/1/17

Whilst lessons will undoubtedly be learnt in the wake of their European Champions Cup exit, Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter did not have to look to far for answers following his side’s 48-26 reverse to Clermont Auvergne.

Having entered the final week of qualification from Pool 5 in with a shout of potential qualification into the last eight, that dream was extinguished inside 40 brutal minutes at the Stade Marcel Michelin.

Benjamin Kayser and Noa Nakataici set the tone for the Frenchmen with scores inside the first 10 minutes, before a penalty try and touchdowns for Wesley Fofana and Nick Abendanon gave the Top 14 outfit a commanding 34-0 lead at the break.

Pecile Yato and Alexandre Lapandry added to Exeter’s woes with further tries during the second period, but Baxter’s side were at least able to restore some pride by claiming a try bonus point of their own through scores from James Short, Ollie Devoto, Olly Woodburn and Michele Campagnaro.

“I am disappointed with our performance overall,” said Baxter. “Too many of our players seemed to turn up with a bit of baggage over what it would take to win,

“We can look at all kinds of reasons for the slow start, like Clermont were very good and desperate to get a home quarter-final, but I’m not sure it was all down to their good work.  We came here with a game plan in mind of how we thought it was going to go, yet we didn’t execute in the way we had talked about all week.

“It felt like we were spectators to a very good Clermont performance early on and we never really recovered from that. I think we cleared the air pretty well at half time with the guys, but obviously it was all a little too late for us.

“Yes, our second half performance was much better and more of what we had talked about, but what it takes to win is you turn up and do your job flat out, which is what we didn’t do in that first half, but have been doing ever since we played Clermont at home back in October.

“It has been the driving force behind the upturn in our form, about individual players taking responsibility for their parts in the game, and it is hard to say that was happening out there today.

“Clermont are a very good side, but we didn’t have too many issues knocking over and tackling international-quality players against Ulster last week, but in the first 30 minutes today, it looked like we hardly made a tackle.”

And whilst the home side’s dominance in the first period was there for all to see, Exeter’s cause was hardly helped by yellow cards for Woodburn and Devoto, both of which left Baxter somewhat annoyed at the final whistle.

Winger Woodburn was first to be sent to the sidelines when he was adjudged to have deliberately knocked a pass from Abendanon into touch – and Devoto followed suit just moments later for a high tackle on the same player.

In the period both men were off the field, the hosts profited to the tune of 19 points and left the Chiefs with little chance of pulling off any kind of result to bolster their hopes of advancing into the quarter-finals for a second successive season.

“From what we could pick up, it seemed like the referee was determined to yellow-card Olly Woodburn, despite other people saying he had knocked the ball backwards and he was pushed as well as he tried to get hold of the ball,” said a frustrated Baxter.

“There were so many reasons you could find to not make that a penalty try and a yellow card.

“As for Ollie Devoto, I cannot believe World Rugby want that to be a yellow card. We are talking about contact that was only a foot off the ground. Those things didn’t help us, but if I am honest, we would probably not have been in those scenarios, scrambling into the corner, if we had shown more intensity in the game.”

The Chiefs will now change focus to the Anglo-Welsh Cup and a home game against Wasps next Saturday (3pm), a fixture in which Baxter is likely to ring the changes amongst his squad.

He added: “We have got a group of players who have put a lot of minutes in and have worked very hard over the last ten weeks.

“We will give a large number of those a week off before we bring them back into training, and it will allow us to play all of the guys who have probably not had as much game time as they would have liked over the next couple of weeks, and get everyone up and running for what will be a tremendous home Premiership game against Wasps in February.

“We have still got an awful lot to play for, and I am actually pretty pleased with where we are heading as a team and a club, and if people think we’re not going to have some kicks in the pants along the way, they are probably getting it all wrong, because we are still relatively young in the Premiership.”