Baxter's anger at display

 

By Mark Stevens

Angry Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter bemoaned "stupid" antics from his team as they crashed to a first-ever Aviva Premiership defeat at bottom club Sale Sharks.

Seemingly on course to record a sixth successive league win over their rivals, the Devon club let a 16-5 advantage slip as the hungry Sharks boosted their survival hopes with a 21-16 victory at the Salford City Stadium.

In a dominant first half, the visitors led 13-5 at the turn as the boot of fly-half Gareth Steenson and a try for Fijian winger Watisoni Votu cancelled out a first-ever league try for Sale flanker Dan Braid.

Steenson extended Exeter's lead early in the second half, before the Sharks hit back in style with a record-breaking try for winger Mark Cueto, as well as kicks for Rob Miller, Danny Cipriani and Nick MacLeod.

Even then the Chiefs could have stolen victory right at the death, but Jack Nowell's last-gasp touchdown was ruled out by TMO official Geoff Warren for a forward pass and it was the home side that were popping the champagne come the final whistle.

Afterwards, Baxter pulled no punches in his assessment of his side's display, he said: "Obviously we are very disappointed with the end result, but I’m not going to take anything away from Sale. When the game got tight at the end they did very well.

"I’m a big believer in rugby that you get what you deserve and I think we probably got what we deserved, and I’m quite prepared to say that. The reality from our perspective is that the game should have been dead and buried by half-time. You create that many try-scoring opportunities and pressure in the game and clearly blow that many opportunities, sooner or later it’s going to come back and haunt you."

Although comfortable at 13-5 up at half-time, the Chiefs could easily have been further ahead as a number of gilt-edged attacking chances went begging with increasing regularity.

Baxter added: "The fact we got to 16-5 in the second half, I was kind of thinking we were going to ride through this one, but we didn't and again we were wasteful. I thought the more wasteful we got and the more broken up we got, the more Sale capitalised on that.

"In the end, we looked like the team under pressure and the team fighting relegation. Having said that, we created another try-scoring opportunity right at the end, but for whatever reason we didn't take it. Personally, I didn't think the ball should have gone wide, instead we should have just piled some bodies close to the line and eventually we would have forced the try. That, I suppose, probably showed the kind of night we had. If we could make something hard for ourselves, we made it hard for ourselves."

Aside from failing to take their chances, Baxter was also critical of his team's indiscipline and tactics which he described as both "silly" and "stupid".

Baxter continued: "We were silly in the extreme and that is the only thing I will challenge the players on. If you want to be stupid in a game of rugby, it’s going to come back and bite you.
We did some stupid things out there, which annoyed the referee, and that something I'm not happy about.

"Also it was the silly individual moments that put us under pressure - and it was those penalties that were getting kicked. We often talk about being a side that is in progression and learning, but the first thing you need to learn is not to be stupid and tonight I thought we were stupid at times.

"Moving forward we’ve got to learn to manage the pressure of the game a bit better. I’m frustrated, of course, but I’m not going to take anything away from Sale."

Meanwhile, Sale director of rugby Steve Diamond believes his side can now survive in the Premiership after recording only their third win of the league season.

"Exeter played very well in the first half, we found it hard to control their big lads in the backline, but a shift in attitude at half-time saw us come back and defend very well," said Diamond. "We are in the position we are in through our own fault, we’re bottom of the league but we’ve got a bit of momentum."