Proud Pellow praises his Chiefs

By Mark Stevens
14/11/16

Ricky Pellow admitted his Exeter Chiefs side could be “immensely proud” of their efforts after they recorded a notable 62-25 victory over Cardiff Blues in the Anglo-Welsh Cup.

The Chiefs bounced back from their opening round loss at Harlequins to swot aside the visiting Welsh region with a ten-try success at Sandy Park.

Trailing 10-0 inside the opening four minutes, it was hardly the perfect start for the Devon club, but once Shaun Malton found his way over for their opening try just two minutes later, there was never any looking back for the hosts.

A Penalty Try, plus further touchdowns from Michele Campagnaro, Damian Welch and Sam Simmonds, helped put the Chiefs firmly in command at the break 31-10 up.

Although the Blues were much improved during the second period, the Chiefs continued to rule the roost and wrapped up an emphatic win with further tries from Tom Hendrickson, Stuart Townsend, Tom Johnson, Jack Innard and Tom Lawday.

Man-of-the-match Joe Simmonds completed the home side’s scoring by converting six of the tries.

At the final whistle, a happy Pellow was quick to praise the efforts of his match-day squad, 14 of whom are products of the club’s highly successful academy system.

“I think the guys need to be immensely proud of what they have achieved as a group,” said the Cornish coach. “To come out and put the scoreline we did on a young Cardiff side was really pleasing.

“We talked in the week about showing what it means to be a Chief and to a man every one of the guys showed that.”

Despite the early wobble, Pellow was heartened by the way his team didn’t panic and instead refocused their attentions on the game plan they had devised.

“Perhaps early on we were guilty of trying to play too much and didn’t expect Cardiff to come flying up like they did,” said Pellow. “The pleasing thing for me was that we didn’t let it affect us, instead we parked it, moved on, and then as the game went on we got stronger and stronger.”

And with such a youthful look to the Chiefs line-up, Pellow believes the experience gleaned by a number of the team will prove invaluable moving forward.

“To have 14 boys in the squad, all of whom have come through the academy system, is brilliant and a massive credit to the work that has been undertaken with all of them.

“For any young player the key is they need to be playing and that’s what we try and do with all of our guys. I think you see how much it benefits them going out to some of the local clubs by the way they performed today.

“It’s a massive tool in terms of us developing younger players, as is this competition because it allows us to give these guys a chance to experience first team rugby and to play alongside what you’d call a real good sprinkling of senior players.”

In what was a healthy mix of youth and experience, the Chiefs were able to get a decent foothold back into the competition having come unstuck at Harlequins the week previous.

“If you look at last week, we created a lot of opportunities, but we didn’t finish them off,” added skills coach Pellow. “Today we created opportunities, but this time we were able to finish them off and that was the big difference.

“The win has now put us firmly back in the competition, which is massively important, and it’s allowed us to drop back into this next Premiership block with a bit of a spring in our step.”