Baxter frustrated after Bath loss

By Mark Stevens

A frustrated Rob Baxter was left to rue missed opportunities as his Exeter Chiefs suffered opening day heartache in the Aviva Premiership against Westcountry rivals Bath.

George Ford’s penalty two minutes from time proved the key difference as the Devon club went down 19-17 at the Recreation Ground.

For large periods, however, the Chiefs were the dominant force and having been given a dream start when winger James Short crossed for the opening try of the game on 44 seconds, they were never quite able to pull away as the returning Ford kept the hosts in contention with a 14-point haul.

Skipper Gareth Steenson did his best for the Chiefs, slotting four penalties of his own, but it was the crucial conversion of Bath’s only try from Stuart Hooper in the first half that added up in the end.

“The positive is that is the best performance we have put in here in the Premiership and the closest we have come to winning, but the frustration is we had enough opportunities to win the game,” said Baxter.

“To not score tries from the five-metre positions we gained is frustrating and a little disappointing, and that is what I said to the players.

“We had the opportunities and we went off script a little bit. We were very good, particularly in the second half of last season, converting those opportunities, and we became very single-minded and very dominant in that area.

“You only have to look back at the Saracens away game a couple of weeks from the end of last season, and when we got five metres out we were scoring, almost whatever happened, but today, for some reason, we didn’t look quite as decisive in the plan we were going to put together.

“Bath had two yellow cards today as well, and that kind of shows how wasteful we were with our opportunities.”

That said, Baxter will have seen plenty from his players to give him encouragement ahead of their upcoming home encounter with London Irish.

"Large parts of what we did went well but the truth is we came under pressure at the set piece a couple of times and that hurt us,” continued Baxter.

"If we had the control we got there last week in the pre-season game, then things would have worked out better for us.

"You can't fault their endeavour - we couldn't have tried any harder than we did - and we were in it right to the death."