Match Reaction - Steve Salvin
By James Fowler
26/2/23
Exeter Women’s Assistant Coach Steve Salvin said he was ‘happy with five points’ following his side’s comprehensive 45-5 victory over the Loughborough Lightning at Sandy Park on Saturday, which saw the Chiefs extend their lead at to the top of the Allianz Premier 15s table following Gloucester-Hartpury’s loss to Saracens earlier in the day.
The Chiefs ran in seven tries in total, which included a second consecutive brace for the incredibly impressive American international prop Hope Rogers, and a hat-trick for England Under-20s star Maisy Allen. There were further scores for Rachel Johnson and skipper Poppy Leitch to cap off yet another bonus point victory, the Chiefs’ 11th in a row.
Reflecting on the performance, Salvin although clearly delighted to come away with another win, felt his team were some way off their best.
“Happy to score 45 and limit Loughborough to five,” he said. “Probably similar sort of emotions to last week in that again it’s probably a satisfactory victory without being sort of at our very best, but we’ll take it and move onto next week.”
In what was a relatively stop-start encounter, the Chiefs did at times struggle to find the attacking fluency which has been so prominent throughout many of their performances during the season, and Salvin felt that this was down to some technical issues which needed to be fixed during the game.
“There were two or three technical things we picked up at half time,” he added. “There wasn’t a great deal of talk around the emotional side of it, there were just a couple of fix-ups we needed to make. We did make those second half and we were a little bit better, but it was a bit stop-start and we never really got massive amounts of fluidity into our game, but we can take heart from the fact that we still got five points.”
Salvin was understandably keen to sing the praises of Allen and Rogers who between them scored five of the Chiefs seven tries to continue both of their incredible try-scoring form. However, the coach also emphasised his belief that it’s the efforts of the team-mates around them who help create the opportunities for them to cross the whitewash so regularly.
“I don’t know how many she (Allen) has scored this year, but it’s getting a bit silly now. Hope (Rogers) got two as well, so she must be pretty close in terms of the scoring charts.
“Those two would tell you a lot of their tries come off things other people do for them and as great a players as those two are, it’s about what we put together as a team, and at times today that didn’t quite function perfectly, but it’s still great particularly for Maisy (Allen) to get a hat-trick again.”
The league table will tell you that Loughborough are not having one of their better seasons, with the team from the East Midlands only have managed four victories throughout the season to date, however despite this the side featuring the England captain Sarah Hunter certainly made life difficult for the Chiefs at times, and Salvin reflected on the challenges brought by the visitors.
“They’re a very, very good side. We saw a couple of incidences in the first half where we gave what we felt were a couple of silly penalties away and it gave them really good field position because their 10 is able to put boot to ball and take 30-40 metres away from us.”
“We knew the quality of them coming into this weekend and we fully expected it to be a very difficult game and they made it extremely difficult for us so we’re glad we’ve got away with five points and we’ll move on.”
There was a feeling from some of the Chiefs incredibly loyal supporters that there were some points left out on the field, with some handling errors at key times potentially costing the home side some try scoring opportunities. Salvin believes however that those errors are normal in a high pressure game, and he was confident they can be fixed heading forward into next weekend's huge encounter with Harlequins at Twickenham.
“These things happen in high pressure sport. I think though that we’re maybe in that period of the season now where it’s about getting points and moving onto next week and you’re probably not going to get the best performances at this point in time.
“Hopefully, we can remedy that next week and put a really good performance together against Harlequins, but as I said the last two weeks have probably been a little bit below where we would like to be, but that’s life, we’ve got 10 points and we’ll move onto next week.”
The Chiefs set piece which is so well drilled by Salvin has been mightily impressive throughout the vast majority of this season, however the lineout has been far from its best over the course of the last two games, and Salvin said there will be ‘some fix ups this week’ in order to make sure that area of the Chiefs game is back firing on all cylinders moving forward throughout the rest of the season.
“We’ve had a couple of disappointing weeks with our lineout so there’s going to be some fix ups this week. I think to be fair to Loughborough they deserve credit, I think the way they particularly defended our lineout today was really good, and we’ll take some learning from it and we’ll make some adaptations for next week, but no panic it’s just a case of making a few fix ups.”
There is no doubting the enormity of next weekend’s massive double-header at Twickenham, with both the Chiefs men’s and women’s teams doing battle with their Harlequins rivals in ‘Big Game 14’, however Salvin believes that the focus will very much be on the game in hand, rather than the occasion.
“The focus will just be on preparing to play Quins regardless of where we play them and it’s not something we really intend on talking up. It is going to be a great occasion and obviously it’s a privilege for the players to get to play at the national stadium, but it’s probably down on the list in terms of things that we see as significantly important next week. We’ve got to prepare for an exceptionally good side next week so that will be the focus.”