Reaction: Mixed feelings for Baxter
By Mark Stevens
2/9/17
Exeter Chiefs Director of Rugby Rob Baxter refused to be too downbeat despite seeing his side slip to a last-gasp defeat at the hands of Gloucester on Friday night.
In their first league outing since lifting the Aviva Premiership crown back in May, the Chiefs were undone right at the death at Jason Woodward stole over for a dramatic winning try to give the Cherry & Whites a 28-21 victory at Kingsholm.
With little to choose between either side in a pulsating Round One encounter, Baxter saw plenty in his side’s display to give him encouragement moving forward.
“Overall it’s about par for us, we haven’t won many opening games all that often. Going away from home getting a bonus point, most of the time you call that a par performance,” said Baxter.
“I’m actually pleased with large parts of what we did. I thought our physical endeavour was very good and we looked like we had fuel in tank for large parts of the game.
“Am I frustrated with other areas of our game? Yes, I am. I thought defensively we didn’t look quite as excited as we should have been. We looked quite excited when we had the ball and worked hard with the ball going through multi-phases, but defensively we were a bit passive and it took us a while to find some really good defensive energy. That frustrates me a little bit, just because ultimately that was the key for the field position that Gloucester scored their points from.”
In a nip-and-tuck first half, which was 14-14 at the break, the Chiefs twice held the lead when young No.8 Sam Simmonds crossed for converted scores. While at the other end, home lock Jeremy Thrush also helped himself to a brace of tries, both of which were granted following discussions between referee Matt Carley and TV match official Sean Davey.
Certainly one of Thrush’s scores had an element of doubt to it when seen on review, but Baxter - although a little frustrated - refused to be drawn into debating the matter too much at the final whistle.
“I have only seen what you have on the big screen,” added Baxter when quizzed about it by the assembled media afterwards. “I think it’s probably much more relevant for you guys to watch the footage on BT and make your own decisions because I could sit here and say something that is completely wrong. I have reviewed both tries a couple of times on the laptop, and you will probably look at it and find reasons to award it and other reasons not to award it.
“To be fair to Gloucester, they got the rub of the green on one or two decisions, but if you have got the ball, your in possession and having a go, sometimes you do get that rub of the green. Fair play to them, they kept coming at us right until the death and as we’ve shown in the past, if you do that, sometimes you come through.”
Having only won once in their past five opening day fixtures, there appears little cause for panic from Baxter and his Chiefs, who themselves had a late chance to snatch victory when Henry Slade pulled a penalty kick wide of the mark.
“The last 20 minutes, other than the try at the end, we were hugely in control of a lot of what was happening out there,” continued Baxter. “Yes, we have gone out of process a few times today, but that’s something we can work with. I think in the long run, today will be very good for us because we’ve worked hard, we’ve blown away a lot of cobwebs, and a lot of what we did was very good.
“Have we made mistakes within it? Yes, we did.
“Is it a really good reminder that there are some really strong processes that we go through that work really well for us, again ‘yes it is’. Some of the knock-ons with the try-line in sight, we kind of got out of shape and did things we don’t normally do. If you look at it, though, that team is quite changed from the end of last season. We only had 13 involved tonight that played in the final, so that is a fair old turnover.
“Looking forward, however, we need to get a lot more guys out there playing to appreciate those things and ultimately change things a little bit. As I said, a losing bonus point away from home isn’t that bad. Tonight we have done a lot of good things and I think I will be really pleased when I look at the physical stats that we have chucked into the game.
“Are there work-ons for us? Yes.
“Are we OK? Yes and I just said that to the lads in the changing room. Now, we have just got to work on the day by day stuff of getting better.”