Baxter remaining upbeat

By Mark Stevens

Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter remained upbeat despite seeing his side slip to a narrow 24-20 defeat at home to Leicester Tigers in the Aviva Premiership.

A solid first half performance from the Chiefs had them ahead 17-16 at the break as Dave Ewers and Haydn Thomas both crossed for tries, alongside kicks from fly-half Gareth Steenson.

The Tigers, though, are nothing short of resilient and having claimed scores of their own through Anthony Allen and Ben Youngs, it was the boot of summer signing Freddie Burns that caused much of the damage to their Devon hosts.

For Baxter and his squad, Saturday’s result mirrored the outcome of a number of games last term where the Chiefs were not quite able to get themselves over the winning line.

It’s an area Baxter and his team are keen to address and the Chiefs leader believes more exposure to games such as this will only help the development of his young troops.

“In some ways there were some exciting things out there and in other ways it’s a little disappointing again,” said Baxter at the final whistle. Yes, we’re always disappointed to lose at hime, but anyone who was here will know that game has turned on some fine margins.

“The plus point for me is that a lot of those fine margins we can address. It’s not for us to shake our heads and wonder how we are possibly going to beat Leicester because the moments are there for us, we just have to create more and be more composed in pressure situations, which we didn’t do today.

“The other issue is we also gave us some pretty soft points and when we review the game that is the thing that we will want to work on the most.”

Indeed, penalties either side of the break from England international Burns allowed the Tigers to haul back a 14-7 deficit to 17-16.

Further chances came for the Chiefs during the second period - the best being when Sam Hill was unable to hold onto a pass from team-mate Ian Whitten - but still Baxter saw plenty in his side’s display to give him encouragement moving forward.

“I thought our scrum was very good and at times our driving game was also good,” said Baxter. “We’ve also scored two good tries and we’ve been prepared to build some pressure.

“We’ve got a losing bonus so we’ve got six points out of two games, so in the bigger picture we’re off to a good start.

“We have to keep collecting points, obviously we want to get them with wins, but at the same time wins will come if you do the right things. In doing the right things today we came up a bit short, but on another day if Sam Hill had caught the ball we score a try and win the game.

“That is how close we are getting now and I can deal with that so long as we train hard, play with endeavour and the boys work hard for each other. That gives you a chance to win games of rugby.”

Next up for the Chiefs is Friday night’s trip to Kingsholm where Gloucester - fresh from claiming their first win of the season against Sale Sharks - lie in wait.

Baxter added: I know people will get fed of me saying this, but we do need to play in games like this. I have just said to the guys, I don’t want them moping around, the fight for us now is to bounce through this, get back on track and get up to Gloucester as quickly as possible because the games come thick and fast.

“I want us to be excited going to Kingsholm on a Friday night in front of the TV cameras and I want to enjoy every week. Obviously we’re disappointed to have lost today, but there were elements of our performance that the players will have have enjoyed and been pleased about, so now we have to build on that.”