Whitten seeks rapid response

By Mark Stevens

Ian Whitten feels Exeter Chiefs should use the disappointment of Saturday’s narrow loss at Bath as the key driver for a big training week ahead of this weekend’s visit of London Irish to Sandy Park.

For a sixth successive Aviva Premiership season, the Chiefs were again on the losing side against their nearest and dearest as George Ford’s penalty two minutes from time ensured Bath claimed the spoils courtesy of a 19-17 win.

That said, the Chiefs – who dominated for long periods of the game at The Rec – were left kicking themselves at the final whistle, having gone close with a plethora of scoring chances.

“I would say we are absolutely gutted, we should have won,” assessed Irishman Whitten at the final whistle. “We did everything right a lot of the time. We got into the five-meter area like Rob [Baxter] told us to do, but we just couldn’t finish and paid the price.

“Fair play to them, they hung in there and didn’t give up and it came round for them, but from our point of view there were too many missed opportunities.”

It meant yet more heartache for the Devonians, who have still to claim a league win over Bath in the Roman City since their promotion back in 2010.

However, such is the relentless nature of the Aviva Premiership that the Chiefs will not have to wait long to get their campaign back on track. This Saturday, they welcome London Irish to the Westcountry in a 6pm kick-off at Sandy Park.

“We can take a bit of confidence from it because we played some good rugby, but we should have had more points,” continued Whitten. “We have a few things to work on now for London Irish, like trying to score a few more and being more accurate.

“It is an important match for us next week so we need to take the positives and bounce back from the loss. You have to do it week in, week out in this league and it is really important you don’t lose your confidence, so we need to have a good training week.

“We need to get our heads reset a wee bit and get them right for Saturday. Our performance was good but that is scant consolation at the moment. It is disappointing because the four points were
there for us and that is hard to take.

“We have some time to get over it now. We played some good stuff and can build on that next week and hopefully get the W.”