Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
5/2/22
Rob Baxter praised the fighting spirit of his young Exeter Chiefs side, despite seeing them slip to a last-gasp defeat at home to Wasps in the Gallagher Premiership.
Paulo Odogwu’s try deep into added on time helped the visitors to rescue a dramatic 27-26 win at Sandy Park.
Until that point, the Chiefs - ravaged with injury, illness and international call-ups - had given everything and had been the dominant side as they bagged tries through Tom O’Flaherty, Lewis Pearson, Jack Innard and Richard Capstick, three of which were converted by skipper Joe Simmonds.
Wasps, though, would not go quietly and the Midlanders fought back late on to seal the points, claiming scores through Odogwu, Joe Launchbury and Alfie Barbeary with Jimmy Gopperth kicking the remainder of their points.
Post-game, Baxter refused to be too downbeat on a performance in which some of the club’s young guns manfully stoop up to the plate.
“It’s tough to take, but weirdly it might just be a marker of the season we are going to have,” said the Chiefs’ Director of Rugby. “One where we are going to have some tough things to fight through, but eventually it is going to make us a better team - that’s what it feel like a little bit.
“It feels like we have a group of guys who are going to have to come through it like steel in a furnace, where it makes them tougher in the long term. Today, we have worked incredibly hard, especially given the disruptions we have again this week in the build-up to the game. In the end, we have come very close to winning an important game of rugby, but just come up short in the last few seconds.”
With just five minutes left in the game, the Chiefs led by 11 points and thought they had cemented their win when centre Tom Hendrickson appeared to dot down for a fifth try. Sadly, TV replays showed the Exeter man lost control of the ball just prior to touching down and the score was chalked off.
Wasps made the most of the reprieve to score through Barbeary and Odogwu, leaving the hosts and their legion of supporters gutted at the final whistle.
“I think what we have to be careful of now - and we’ve just talked about it as coaches in the office - is every moment in that last ten minutes is going to feel like the defining moment that lost us the game, but that is never the truth,” added Baxter. “There will be loads of moments in that game, but they all add us the same. It’s just that those big moments feel like they all came in that last five minutes. Individually, any one of them going the other way and we win the game.
“It feels tough, but you have to be hugely proud of some of the guys. Daf Jenkins stepping in and doing 80 minutes like he did was fantastic. Potentially, he wins us the game with his last pass to Tom Hendrickson, but it hasn’t quite come off for him. That said, you look overall and there has to be a lot of positives to take from that. You bump another 7 or 8 internationals into that, another 4 or 5 who are injured, it’s got to feel positive that if we stay in the fight, we still have a chance no matter what happens.
“As I just said to the guys inside in the changing room, the definition of a beaten man is someone who stops fighting and today we never stopped fighting, so we are not a beaten team yet.
“We have taken a lot of pain with a lot of players over the years, If people remember, we lost a Heineken Cup quarter-final with a fully loaded Exeter Chiefs team against a fully loaded Wasps team with last kick of the game a few years ago, but that pain drove us onto winning the Heineken Cup. For those players today, I want them use today’s experience to drive this group onto bigger and better things.”