Baxter hails 'massive' victory

By Mark Stevens

Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter described his side’s latest Aviva Premiership victory over Worcester Warriors as “massive” as the battle for qualification into a new-look Europe begins to intensify.

The Chiefs bounced back from successive league defeats to Leicester Tigers and Gloucester by recording a five-point maximum in a pulsating encounter.

Dave Lewis, Sam Hill and Jack Yeandle (2) crossed for Exeter tries, as did fly-half Gareth Steenson (pictured) who also weighed in with a further 13 points with the boot as the Chiefs moved up to seventh in the league standings.

However, as is the case with league games between these two rivals at Sixways, the game once again went right to the wire as relegation-haunted Worcester hit back from trailing 35-18 early in the second half to come within a whisker of claiming a crucial victory in their survival fight.

Chris Pennell, David Lemi (2) and Agustin Creevy helped themselves to tries for the Midlanders, whilst fly-half Ryan Lamb added the remainder of their points, including a late penalty which ensured another vital bonus point for Dean Ryan’s side.

For Baxter, though, this latest win - albeit a little closer than he had envisaged - has helped to put Devon’s finest firmly back in the hunt for a place at European Rugby’s top table next season.

“We talked this week about the potential of qualifying for the new European Cup competition, and I can see us scraping and scrapping our way towards seventh place, and then having a couple of heart-stoppers in a double header against a French team!,” said Baxter.

“It was a massive five points, and most of the league games we play at Sixways tend to end up like this, where we look the better team and look like we are getting in control, and then we lose momentum and get a bit ragged and Worcester come back at us, and it is a bit of a dogfight at the end.

“Some of our attacking play today was as good as I have seen us play this season, but some of our individual ill-discipline really hurt us, and it was that which took all the momentum of the game away from us.

“We just didn’t need to do a lot of it, and it added up to a huge penalty count against us, and whether they were all correct, we will have to have a good look at it, but it did mean the momentum of the game was always interrupted with us going backwards, because we were having to watch kicks, and that is frustrating and disappointing, because we have talked a lot about that.

“Our attacking energy, our intent and the way we wanted to score tries were all fantastic, so there were a lot of positives.”

Baxter picked out several players for special praise, including fly-half Gareth Steenson, centre Sam Hill and prop Alex Brown, who were all recalled to the line-up.

“Our set piece functioned really, really well and Alex came in and put in an 80-minute shift and had a really good game for us, and our line-out went well,” he said. “Gareth ran the attack really, really well, we looked sharp in attack, and Sam Hill looked very sharp.

“There was some genuine sharpness about some of the stuff we did, and that really impressed me and bodes well for the next few weeks, because we are definitely going to go on the attack.

“We will probably spend a relatively small amount of time out on the field now in training, and just focus on really enjoying going out and playing good, attacking rugby, but also add a little bit of steel to our self-discipline.”

With crunch home dates against sixth-placed Sale Sharks and fifth-placed Harlequins next up for the Chiefs, Baxter is well aware his team are at a crucial stage of their campaign.

“If Sale watched us today, they will probably think they have got a good chance of scoring some points against us, but that we will probably score a few against them, so I think it is going to be interesting,” he commented. “I don’t think we will have the same issues next week with the huge penalty count, but we have got to make sure we maintain that attacking intent.”