Baxter delighted with away win

By Mark Stevens

Rob Baxter hailed the character of his Exeter Chiefs side, particularly his pack of forwards, as they produced a top notch display to see off rivals Wasps 41-27 in the Aviva Premiership.

The Devon club made it five wins in six starts in English rugby’s top flight as they ran in six tries at the Ricoh Arena to move back to the summit of the table.

No.8 Thomas Waldrom led the charge with a hat-trick of scores, the first Exeter player to do so in the Premiership, whilst there were also touchdowns for Jack Nowell, Mitch Lees and Moray Low.

Fly-half Gareth Steenson kicked the remainder of the points for the visitors, whose only dampener on a bright day in the Midlands was the loss of playmaker Henry Slade to a broken leg in the second half.

In reply, Wasps - who had fought back from a half time deficit of 27-13 to level at 27-all - landed tries through Frank Halai, Ashley Johnson and Lorenzo Cittadini with returning No.10 Jimmy Gopperth kicking a further 12 points.

rIt was, however, the Chiefs who prevailed with arguably their best display of the calendar year so far.

"The performance was very good,” said Baxter. “You know I'll be honest, credit to Wasps, I was surprised how well they fought back into it, because I think the truth is, and I've seen it before with our lads, Wasps have had some big emotional performances in the last few weeks and they are draining and they do take it out of you and sometimes it's hard to hit the field with that same intensity when you have banged away and banged away at it for a few weeks.

“I know people will look at the Leinster and Toulon games, look at the scoreboard and think they look like comfortable victories, but I know they take a lot out of you in the build-up during the week and in the 80 minutes of course.

"Our challenge was to get out on the pitch and try and put a bit of pressure on Wasps with our line speed and defensively put pressure on their scoreboard and see if they had been drained by those two previous games and to be fair the way they came back showed a great resolve and then equally we showed a great resolve and we pretty much had to win the game twice didn't we.

"We looked like we were doing enough in the first half and then pretty much Wasps wrested the momentum back and we kind of had to fight to win the game again and we did and I was really pleased with that element of our game."

With some many stand-out performances, it was the Exeter pack who gleaned a lot of Baxter’s praise post-match.

He continued: “A pack of forwards turned up today and they created some opportunities which they kept ramming home. I don’t think it’s all that important whether or not Wasps had not conceded a try here before today, but there was a chink there that we saw and we kept going back to it.

“In tight games some teams may go to the corner and instead take the points, but today we went after the first one, got reward from it and then once you bang on in, you’ll keep going after a team. I’ve said before, once you show a bit of weakness in an area, teams will soon come after you in that area.”

The victory ensures it will be a happy festive period for the Chiefs with Baxter adding: “We know going into Christmas we’ll be in at least second place, so that’s very pleasing. Now what we have to do is make sure - a bit like Wasps today - that we keep tapping into that emotional well and keep producing big performances.

“That will be the challenge for us this season, how many times can we keep sending boys out onto the field in the right mental and physical state? I think you have to give great credit to the boys in the back-row, they’ve replaced two very good performers in Don Armand and Dave Ewers and they’ve shown we have a bit of fight there.

“Also it’s good to see Geoff Parling get a start and then when he came off, Damian Welch come on and ran the show in the line-out. It’s good that we now have that ability to chop and change and we have to make sure that we use that over the coming season and those guys stand up.”