'First half cost us' - says Baxter

By Mark Stevens

Frustrated Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter said it was his side's 'passive' first half display that ultimately proved costly in their narrow 17-16 home defeat to Northampton Saints in the Aviva Premiership.

In a tight encounter against the high-flying Saints, the Chiefs were ultimately undone right at the death as George Pisi's converted try two minutes from time gave the visitors their 11th league win of the season.

Until that point, Baxter's side looked on course to claim a notable scalp as they hit back from a 10-9 half-time deficit to lead 16-10 going into the dying embers.

Gareth Steenson's three penalties, plus a converted try from Dave Lewis, had given the Chiefs a slender advantage as they countered against tries from James Wilson and Samu Manoa.

However, it was not to be for the Chiefs and Baxter, who expressed his disappointment at the final whistle. He said: "I am a bit frustrated because ultimately I don't think we played that well in the first half. I don't think we were physically aggressive as you need to be when you play a very good side like Northampton. Fair play to them they came down with their internationals not in their side, a couple of injuries issues as well, Christian Day went off early, yet in the end they have still come through a tough game of rugby and forced the win at the end.

"Great credit to them for that, but first half I thought we lacked being direct and clear in what we wanted to do. I thought we were a bit passive. If you look at the scores we conceded in that first half - when we had a strong wind behind us - we gave away silly penalties to give them field position; then when we score we mess up a restart and we don't clear things up and all of a sudden they have a try out of nothing.

"As I said, it's frustrating because we will look back and say 90% of the game was OK again, it's just too many of the odd things that are hurting us when we need to be well focused and decisive about what we do. I've just said to the guys that we let one slip through our fingers today because the way we played in the second half, had we played anything like that in the first half, we would not have been behind and conceded the points we did. That would have given us the platform to back up that second half which, I thought, was pretty good.

Baxter added: "You could see the difference in the second half clearly. We showed strong carries, good clear-outs, good continuity and we were the team putting them under pressure and winning the penalties because we were playing the harder, faster rugby. Our learn, I suppose, is that we have to enforce that from the start and we didn't today, we haven't lost the game in the last five minutes, we lost it for a fair bit of what we did in first half.

"To get to the top at this level you consistently have to make the right decisions and consistently bring your A1 game onto the pitch all the time. I said to the guys at half-time, how many have you have put a big physical highlight into the game? It was not only that last five minutes of the first half that we went after Northampton and looked like getting a try potentially. Up until then I would not have said we had too many big carries, good clear-outs, hot ball or had any real tempo on the game. It changed after half-time, but by then we had passed up 40 minutes of try-scoring opportunities."

With Bath next on the agenda at Sandy Park this coming Saturday, Baxter is hopeful lessons will be learnt ahead of what is now a crucial Westcountry derby.

"These guys are very good and they work hard in training," added the coach. "I've just said to them what we do on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we need to ram home on the weekend. We didn't quite do that today, but we have an opportunity to do that against Bath next week. We have a bit of a dragon slain with Bath, we've not beaten them yet, and it's a big game for us to get after. What we need to do is hit that game with flat-out intensity and play better than we did today

"I'm not going to overreact or start ranting and raving because ultimately one result doesn't overly effect your season if you don't let it. If you keep dealing with the issues that are there and push forward then you'll be fine in the long run. At the same time, though, I'm not going to run away from the fact with the players that they were a bit off in first half and we'll talk plenty about that next week."