Baxter hails 'fantastic' year for Chiefs

By Nigel Walrond

“Fantastic” is Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter’s half-term report on his side as they begin 2014.

Last Saturday’s 22-6 defeat to Harlequins at Twickenham saw the Chiefs drop to sixth place in the Aviva Premiership table at the halfway stage of the regular league season.

However, they are only five points outside of the top four, having come through a very tough run of fixtures to see out the old year.

“The truth of it is we are going really well,” said Baxter. “There is always a rate of improvement that you want, and we would like to have been better against Harlequins, but the fact we are halfway through the season and we are challenging for a place in the top four is a massive positive.

“The negatives are we have probably let a couple of games get away from us, where we have been very, very good and almost been there.

“That has been the case even in the last few weeks, against Bath and Saracens, where a win would have left us even happier with where we stand in the season.”

Exeter have an almost identical record to the halfway point of the Premiership last season. They are once again sixth, with six wins and five defeats from their 11 games, producing 27 points, whereas 12 months ago they had 29 points from the same number of matches and a similar win-loss record.

Strangely, Sunday’s opponents London Wasps are in almost exactly the same position as this time last year as well, again lying seventh with five wins and six losses. Last year they had 28 points and this time 27.

Exeter’s six wins have come against the six teams currently below them in the table, while their five defeats have been to the sides making up the top five at the end of 2013.

“I am a bigger picture guy and I talk about it all the time,” said Baxter, who can look back personally on an excellent 12 months, during which he was called up as forwards coach for the England senior side’s summer tour to Argentina and also won the BBC South West’s Coach of the Year award.

“We are in the top half of the Premiership halfway through the season, which is not the worst place to be for a team that is quite new in the league,” said Baxter. “What we have to do is not be happy with just being here, and that is ultimately what we have been very good at.

“We have never really been happy with where we are in the Premiership - we always want it all - but sometimes you have just got to pace that, and last Saturday at Twickenham was a little reminder that sometimes you need to experience things to get better as you go along.”

Bath have become famous in recent seasons for being Exeter’s bogey team, and the same applies to Wasps when it comes to playing the Chiefs.

Exeter have won their last seven matches against the High Wycombe-based outfit in all competitions, with the Chiefs’ last success against them a 30-26 victory at Sandy Park in mid-September.

Exeter’s last triumph at Adams Park came in their final away game of the 2012-13 season, with Jack Yeandle, Jack Nowell, Damian Welch and Haydn Thomas all scoring tries in a 37-24 bonus-point win that, at the time, took the Chiefs to the verge of securing a place in this season’s Heineken Cup.