'We'll keep fighting' - Rob

By Mark Stevens

Disappointed Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter says his side will continue to "keep fighting" despite slipping to a 30-8 Aviva Premiership defeat at Leicester Tigers.

On a tough afternoon for the Chiefs in the East Midlands, Baxter could only watch on as home winger Adam Thompstone, making his first start for the Tigers, claimed a hat-trick of tries to go alongside a further 15 points from England international Toby Flood.

Exeter countered with an early penalty from fly-half Ignacio Mieres and a last-gasp try from replacement Ben White, but sadly they were the rare bright spots for the visitors who had come into the game on the back of an excellent 14-12 home win over Saracens.

Afterwards, Baxter gave his take on the game, stating: "Scorelines don’t massively mean that much to me. I have been doing it long enough to know that scorelines come and go. Playing to your potential is the only thing that matters really, and I don’t think we did that today, which disappoints me.

"We seemed to get frustrated quite quickly with things not going our way, and that just compounded things.

"We made a lot of errors ourselves, there were two or three times when we were in a good pressure position and gave away a penalty, and then followed that up with a second penalty, and we were giving up length-of the-pitch positions and that is unlike us, but it is also something that you have to learn to manage in a team that starts to become more ambitious and wants things to happen.

"When you are desperate to do well and things don’t go quite well, you can become frustrated, but the key is just to get on with things and keep fighting. That is normally one of our strengths, but it is something that you have to keep revisiting."

Although disappointed with the end outcome, Baxter still found several positives to take from the game, he added: "There were periods today, in both halves, when we looked a really good side, but we just didn’t pin them together for long enough, and that’s what you have got to do against good sides.That is where we lost the game - our good moments weren’t enough - and there were too many poor moments."

Certainly the Chiefs were much improved after the break at Welford Road, creating a number of attacking chances. However, a combination of personal mistakes and some excellent defence from the Tigers kept them at bay until the very last minute when White was able to sneak his way over from close range.

"A few times we looked more likely to score than not score, there were a few errors, but it is difficult,’ said Baxter. ‘We are working very hard on creating those kind of opportunities, the players are working extremely hard, and the amount of tries we have scored this season kind of shows we are creating chances.

"Today we didn’t take the opportunities we needed to, but we are a team in progress. Not many teams come to Welford Road and decide to play and go after tries, but we did, and it has worked well for us in the past, but today it didn’t quite come off, perhaps due to a little bit of inaccuracy.

"At the same time, if a couple of kicks at goal had gone over earlier in the game, we could have gone in at half-time only 16-9 down without taking any try-scoring opportunities."

Another frustration Baxter was keen to air post match was the use of the new TMO option, particularly for Thompstone's second try when Mieres appeared to have been taken out in the build-up to the the try.

He said: "I am not going to make excuses, large parts of our game weren't good enough. There's no running away from that, our set-piece wasn't good enough and we coughed up some ball on the floor. Those are things you have to deal with yourself. But the TMO thing is still baffling me a little, at 16-3 we looked like we could play a bit and keep the ball.

"Then we get a TMO decision where our ten knocks on and he's taken out off the ball. We go back to the TMO but he doesn't say anything about it, so I'm a little bit baffled."