Rob Baxter - Match Reaction
By Mark Stevens
25/9/21
Frustrated Exeter Chiefs Director of Rugby, Rob Baxter, says he and his team will continue to look for answers in wake of a second successive Gallagher Premiership defeat at the hands of Northampton Saints.
With just minutes remaining at Sandy Park, the Chiefs looked destined to record their first league win of the season, but a late George Furbank penalty condemned them to a 26-24 loss.
It was a disappointing outcome for the Devonians, who had earlier stormed into a 14-0 lead inside the opening ten minutes thanks to converted tries from Don Armand and Jack Maunder.
The Saints, however, struck back impressively, levelling the with tries of their own from Alex Mitchell and Matt Proctor, before James Grayson fired them in front for the first time with a penalty.
As half time approached, the Chiefs made the most of Sam Matavesi’s yellow card to grab a third try, this time from No.8 Rus Tuima to give them the lead, which they extended in the second half with a penalty from fly-half Joe Simmonds.
Northampton, though, refused to lie down and in a spirited final quarter, penalties from Grayson and Furbank (2) saw Chris Boyd’s side to victory.
Post-game, Baxter gave his reaction to his side’s display, saying: “Of course it’s frustrating, especially when you get yourself in a winning position with just a few minutes left, and you end up losing the game.
"The reasons for winning and losing never change despite what happened in the last few minutes. If we’re honest, we didn't manage every area of the game as well as we should have done and we didn't perform as well as we should in every area.
"That said, it was certainly better than last week [against Leicester], but we just saw multiple small mistakes all add up to hurt us at the end. A couple of mistakes at the scrum, a couple of mistakes at the line out a couple of missed tackles. They kill your momentum and give the opposition energy.
"We managed to make four or five pretty poor mistakes in a row to concede the last penalty in the game and then the result is gone. The last five minutes of the game is a bit like how the start of our season has been.”
Baxter, though, knows his side are not a million miles away from rediscovering their top form – and with some of their frontline stars just a few weeks away from returning, he’s confident it won’t be too long before he and his players are celebrating once again.
“Look, we’re far from terrible,” he added. “Right now we’re making mistakes that we just can’t go over – which in turn means we’re not getting any flow or continuity into our game.
“The players are hurting, so are we as coaches, but the only way to get through this period is to work hard, get our heads down and look to be better next week. To be fair to the players, they had led the discussions in the changing rooms afterwards and I didn’t see any point adding to that.
“I will talk to the group on Tuesday, after which we need to go away and find our baseline again. Once we do that, we can work from there and look to kick on again.”
Next up for the Chiefs is next Sunday’s testing trip to Sale Sharks, a venue which is notoriously difficult to come away from with points.
Baxter, though, insist he and his team will travel there in good heart and safe in the knowledge that many will be predicting very little from the Chiefs up in Salford.
“If I was another coach, I would be looking at us as very vulnerable, that is what the results and performances are saying,” he added. “But, at the end of the day, we are going to go to Sale without a hope of winning aren’t we” he said with a wry smile. “That might be a nice position to be in.”