Baxter looks at 'bigger picture'

By Mark Stevens

Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter insists he is still looking at the "bigger picture" despite seeing his team slip to a 15-10 defeat in their latest Heineken Cup fixture against visiting Glasgow Warriors.

Having led 10-0 thanks to a converted Fetu'u Vainikolo try and a penalty from Henry Slade, the Chiefs allowed their rivals to hit back as tries from Sean Maitland and Sean Lamont, coupled with five points from the boot of full-back Stuart Hogg, saw the Warriors haul themselves off the bottom of Pool Two at the expense of the Chiefs.

It was certainly a disappointing outcome for Baxter and his team, who have now lost eight of their last nine games. However, the Chiefs coach - who made 10 changes to his starting XV from that which was undone at London Wasps the week previous - insisted there were plenty of positives to take in the wake of this latest setback.

"I am a big picture guy, not one who tends to panic too much," said Baxter. "I know we have lost a few games recently, but sometimes you have to take into account just where you are at. Right now we're in the Heineken Cup and we've gone down by one score, it's not like we are competing in a third division competition, this is as good as it gets in Europe.

"Right now we're doing OK in a lot of things that we do, but I want us to get beyond OK and that will be our focus running into the end of the season."

With Baxter keen to utilise this current Heineken Cup fortnight, as well as the next two LV= Cup games to the full, he sprang somewhat of a surprise ahead of kick-off as he made multiple changes to his Chiefs line-up for the visit of the Scotsmen.

"I don't there was a lot left in the Heineken Cup for us, other than an outside chance of getting through to the Amlin. We have looked at this group of two Heineken and two LV= Cup matches to make sure we are in a really good place for the next round of the Premiership. Today we put out a very strong team with quite a few changes from the Wasps game.

"If we had forced a try in that last passage of play, having made ten changes and beaten a Glasgow team going full on, then we would be pretty pleased with ourselves. The positives are there for us and we have come up with a losing bonus point. Obviously you would like to force wins, but some of these guys lack game time and were probably blowing a bit after half an hour. But we have come through a very competitive game and finished pretty close."

Baxter added: "I told the team we are not losing games in the final quarter, instead we're losing them because we're having a few switch off moments and that we need to be a little bit more accurate in other areas. Right now we've got a habit of going soft after we've taken a lead and it happened again today. We didn't react to a couple of things they did right after we scored and all of a sudden it was Glasgow creating the pressure and clawing the game away from us.

"Right now that's our issue that we have and it's one that we need to snap out of pretty quickly."

For sure Baxter will press home that point to his squad this coming week as they prepare to wrap up their Heineken Cup group games with a visit to Cardiff Blues at the Arms Park.

"I'm expecting next week to be very similar to today and we'll select a side based on what we want to achieve," explained Baxter. "Going up there it's rubber crumb; it will be fast and loose, which may suit us in some ways, and we'll look to score some tries and play with real tempo. That is what you have to do that on that surface, you don't grind out defensive performances on those surfaces because the ball is in play so much.

"Like always we're very enthusiastic about next week because going to Cardiff is a great fixture for us. As I said, today's result doesn't change too much in the bigger picture because I still feel we got a lot of positives from those guys that did play today."