Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
23/1/22
Rob Baxter says he and his Exeter Chiefs are relishing the prospect of facing European heavyweights Munster in the last 16 of this season’s Heineken Champions Cup.
The two former winners of the competition will lock horns over the first two weekends of April after they both qualified from the pool stages on Sunday.
Munster thumped Wasps 45-7 at Thomond Park, whilst the Chiefs came unstuck in France as they went down 37-26 to Montpellier at the GGL Stadium.
In a hugely competitive fixture across the English Channel, Baxter’s side recovered from 21-5 down to lead 26-24 midway through the second half. A hat-trick of tries from Sam Simmonds, plus a first-ever touchdown from Sean O’Brien, had put the visitors in charge only for the Frenchmen to hit back late on.
Despite the loss, the Chiefs Director of Rugby was already looking to the future and what should be a mouth-watering match-up against the Irish province.
“That was the funny thing about today,” he said. “We knew we weren’t going to get into the top two, so seedings was going to be difficult. We couldn’t not qualify, so it created a funny game in a way. Montpellier had everything to gain and we could have done with two points to move us up.
“Even late in the game we felt that was still very achievable for us, but we have let that slip as well. What it does do is it changes the next round for us, Munster away – our supporters and our players are going to love that – and in a double-legged knockout experience, which will add a new dynamic to it for both sides.
“We’re going to be at home first, so it’s going to be an interesting pair of games for us. Like I’ve just said to the guys now, good luck to those players who are heading off to international duty, but we have to lock ourselves down now, get ourselves in a bubble and battle our way through what will be a tough Premiership period.”
As for his side’s performance against Montpellier, Baxter added: “Obviously, we’re a little disappointed. We started brightly with that early try, we didn’t pull ourselves together. We looked a little bit over enthusiastic to get the ball from edge to edge. If anything, we were slinging the ball around a fair bit for little reward.
“What we should have been prepared to do was go through phase play because that was always going to be the killer for us today. We knew if we could get through the phases, we were always going to score points. That’s kind of what we grew in to – we started to get some reward – but then we went a little off script again as the game went on and we made some errors which have proved costly in the end.”
Baxter also reserved special praise for England and British Lions forward Simmonds, whose treble took him to 75 tries in 100 Premiership and Champions Cup appearance.
He continued: “It’s a little disappointing for him to finish on the lose side tonight. We actually talked in the week about creating opportunities and getting him over the try-line. He’s obviously done his part, but we haven’t quite seen it off as a team to get the victory of the feel-good factor a couple of points would have got us.
“At the same time, nothing has really changed. We are going into the same scenario as everyone else in terms of a home and away play-off, so we have the same opportunity as everyone else to get into the quarter-finals, we just have to make the most of them.”