Baxter 'thrilled' with European win
By Mark Stevens
20/9/20
Exeter Chiefs are crossing new European borders after they booked their place in the Heineken Champions Cup semi-finals with a 38-15 victory over Northampton Saints at Sandy Park.
Rob Baxter’s side will play host to French giants Toulouse this Saturday after tries from Jack Maunder, Jacques Vermeulen (2), Jack Nowell and Jonny Hill helped to down their Premiership counterparts.
Northampton played their part in an entertaining encounter, claiming tries of their own through Teimana Harrison and Fraser Dingwall, but it was never going to be enough to defeat their Devon hosts.
“Obviously, I’m thrilled with the result, but I’m also thrilled for the players, because they’ve had to come through a tough challenge there,” said Baxter. “It was challenging in all kinds of ways. All through the week it’s been a mental challenge, hearing you are quite large favourites and that there is expectation that you’ll just win the game.
“In professional sport, it’s never that simple, so I thought we did well to deal with that - and we did well to deal with what was an energised, enthusiastic and determined Northampton side, which had a lot of good players in it.”
The Chiefs Director of Rugby had warned pre-game that the Saints, who had lost six of their last seven league fixtures, would be a tough nut to crack, particularly in a one-off contest such as this.
“Sometimes when teams are losing and not in great form, you can easily forget the threat that they pose,” added Baxter. “Any team that has the likes of Dan Biggar, Teimana Harrison, Courtney Lawes in their ranks, that’s a pretty good team!
“We knew they would challenge us in a number of ways, which they did, and we didn’t get control of territory like we normally do. That was certainly a challenge for us, but what I’d like about our guys was that we came through that challenges and others, before establishing our own pressures on them.”
Indeed, the Chiefs rode our Northampton’s early storm to lead 14-10 at the break, but it was during the second half that they really started to flex their muscles and inflict their power game on Chris Boyd’s side.
“It was tough out there at times for us, but some of those individual scores from the likes of Nowellsy and Jacques helped to keep there scoreboard ticking over,” continued Baxter. “As I said, it was a tough game of rugby, but I thought we dealt with the various pressure put on us by Northampton really well.
“That is down to the work put in by the players who, when you look at the game back, really made Northampton work incredibly hard for everything they got. There were times, however, where not everything went our way and I’m hopeful we don’t give Toulouse as many opportunities to get five metres from our try line next week, because it will be a tough ask to keep them out over and and over again.”
Saturday’s showdown will be the first meeting between the two clubs and Baxter is hopeful his team can maintain their rich vein of form against the four-time European champions.
“It’s important now that we recover well and get ourselves mentally and physically right to start preparing for that game on Tuesday,” he said. “We know it will be tough, but equally we’re at home and we won’t have to worry about things like travel and things like that.
“What we can do as a group is, come in Tuesday, review this game, prepare for next week and really look forward to knuckling down and getting ourselves in the best possible condition for a European semi-final.
“I’ve no doubt we will be stronger again next week. That group of players needed a really tough game of rugby and that’s what they got. Now, we have to get ready for another tough, maybe tougher, game against Toulouse.”