Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
7/5/23
Rob Baxter admitted Exeter Chiefs fans can be excited about the future despite rounding off their Gallagher Premiership campaign with a narrow 17-14 loss to London Irish.
In what was a spirted final day outing for the Devonians at the Gtech Community Stadium, Baxter took the opportunity to utilise many of the players who will be remaining at the club for next season and beyond.
Rather than give a final swansong to those departing for pastures new, it was left to Baxter’s next generation to showcase their talents on the big stage.
“I’m very proud of the guys,” said Baxter post-match. “I’ve just said in the changing room, what are you going to do when you get fit?
“A lot of them looked at me strangely, but what I meant was probably 90% of those guys have hardly played any rugby in the last two months, well certainly nothing consistent. Some of them haven’t even played since we won the Premiership Rugby Cup here, so that’s the big marker for me.
“I thought we were very competitive in most areas of the game, we stuck to the game plan well, which has sometimes been our Achilles heel, particularly away from home, and we’ve unfortunately come up a little bit short in some odd circumstances at times. Even so, we can be remarkably proud of the group and we’ve given ourselves a foundation to build from for next season.”
Converted tries from Jacques Vermeulen and Tom Hendrickson meant the Chiefs were always in the game, but it was the Exiles who stole victory thanks to a brace from Juan-Martin Gonzalez and another from replacement Tom Pearson.
“Chances were limited for both sides,” added Baxter. “I think London Irish got some traction in their driving maul, which proved decisive for them in the end. However, I thought we got some traction in some other areas around the quality of our kick game, our chase game and holding things together through the middle third of the pitch.
“Overall, I thought it was pretty ‘even stevens’ throughout. I just said to our guys, if you had been picking up bonus points away from home regularly through the season, we’d be here now talking about where we want to be in the top four. As it is, that’s in itself is a real good marker for us because these fighting losses have been few and far between this season and it bodes well for us going into next season.”
Despite missing out on the play-offs for a second successive season, Baxter remains optimistic about the future and how his side can once again transform themselves back amongst English rugby’s elite.
He continued: “We will deal with it like we did when we first got into the Premiership, we didn’t just come into the Premiership and hit the play-offs from day one. You build things, you build layers of experience for the players and you work hard individually to get to where you want to be.
“The big thing for us as coaches is that we need to spend a lot of quality time getting to know these guys. By that I mean, getting to know them inside out. We need to know what makes them tick, what motivates them, because what motivates a young man now compared to what motivated them 12 years ago are different things. We have got to learn those things, work with them and we have to get them ready to play like they did today.
“As I said, there are a lot of layers we can add in the pre-season and I’m looking forward to that. I genuinely believe it’s going to be a very exciting time.”