Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
17/4/23
Rob Baxter says he and his Exeter Chiefs side will need to 'dust themselves down' quickly in the wake of their 62-19 Gallagher Premiership loss to Leicester Tigers.
In what was a record-breaking Premiership defeat for the Devonians at Welford Road, the Chiefs Director of Rugby was already looking to the future, pledging that he would be looking for an immediate response from his team against Westcountry rivals Bristol Bears this Saturday (3pm).
After a competitive first half in the East Midlands, it was the reigning Premiership champions who ruled supreme after the break as they made the most of a red card to Chiefs winger Olly Woodburn to all but guarantee their own place in the end of season play-offs.
Reflecting on proceedings at the final whistle, Baxter said: "There is a lot going on in my head right now. As I've just said to the players, there are two things you can look at. I came here once as an Exeter player for a Cup quarter-final, thought we did really well, yet lost the game 76-0.
"Things go round and no world-ending event has happened. That said, a few things have conspired against us today. Some of that is down to some very good play by Leicester and some of it is down to poor play by us. How we come through today is obviously very important moving forward for the remainder of the season. We do, however, have to ask one another and we have to challenge each other on were our individual bits and pieces good enough?
"I think today was a classic example of an individual error led to a massive amount of pressure, which then led to a card or a scramble. That red card comes out of us effectively missing a tackle in the middle of the field. From that, we are under pressure, everyone is scrambling like mad, working really hard to stop the try being scored, and it suddenly becomes a yellow card, a red card and a penalty try.
"As much as you would love a scramble and a fight at the end, it’s the As and the Bs, those bits and pieces which with those errors just kept multiplying and ultimately hurt us."
Having been yellow-carded for a deliberate knock on in the first half, Woodburn saw red for the first time in his career when he was adjudged to have committed another technical offence in trying to stop Leicester winger Chris Ashton from scoring.
It was yet another red card for the top-flight and further highlighted Baxter's own point of last week that too many games are now becoming affected by the need to remove players from the field for framework offences.
"Listen, it's very important and I know I made some comments on this in the week," added Baxter. "This is not me criticising officials or referees because there is a framework to work from and they are just following it through. But I think we do need to have a chat about how do we want to create these scenarios so often with mis-matches of this kind all the time. Right now, it seems our first sanction to go to is can we remove players off the field.
"There are some alternatives around foul play in particular where other sports see players ejected and they replace the player on the field. You still suffer as a team because you start to use your bench a lot earlier, that player can still potentially receive a ban down the line, but there are still things we can do if you want to change player behaviour.
"For me, someone being removed from the pitch should only be for serious foul play, which we always want a way of sanctioning, or for a yellow card it should be rewarding a side for good attacking play. Multiple penalties, five metres out, deliberately killing something leading to a try, I get that because that is rewarding the attack.
"I think today's red card is a bit of anomaly in a lot of ways. This is different to a lot of the cards I am talking about on the whole. However, I do think that if we want to try and build a TV audience, we want to build things in the future, just keeping games as close as we can with as much jeopardy as we can, would just keep the game alive a bit more than what potentially happens sometimes."
Despite the Tigers loss, there is still plenty for the Chiefs to contend with in the coming weeks, including a Heineken Champions Cup semi-final against La Rochelle in a fortnight's time.
"We have to move forward as players, move forward as coaches and move forward as a team," said Baxter. "We have to deal with the bits that we can deal with and look for improvements where you can find them. That's what a team should be able to do. You should be able to deal with some wounding moments through the season. Leicester had one last week losing to Leinster in Europe, but they refocused themselves back into this competition.
"We perhaps didn't refocus back into the Premiership as I would have hoped and are perhaps looking more to Europe. That said, we paid the price for a lot of things today. It really does feel like a game that everything that could haunt us or could work against us did just that. We just have to brush ourselves down and get on with things because life goes on and we have another game of rugby again next week."