Horstmann full of praise for youngsters

Kai Horstmann was full of praise for Exeter’s youngsters after they put in a sterling performance in defeat at Bordeaux-Begles.

For a number of the players in Rob Baxter’s much-changed line-up, it was their first taste of top-flight European rugby and they did not let the side down.

Twenty-one-year-old lock Jonny Hill and 22-year-old fly-half Will Hooley were making their first starts for the club, while 21-year-old centre Max Bodilly marked his seasonal bow in the match-day line-up with a stunning try.

The 34-year-old Horstmann, who has seen it all before in 13 years with Harlequins, Worcester and the Chiefs, and who skippered the side from number eight, said: “Full credit to the young guys.
We spoke before the game about them giving a really good account of themselves and being really proud of the performance they put in, and I think every single one of the players did outstandingly well.

“I am really proud of them and really impressed with the shift they put in.”

Horstmann had not played in the Chiefs’ first team this season, such is the competition for back row places, despite some impressive performances in the Aviva A League, and he was delighted to get some game time under his belt.

“There were a huge amount of positives to take from the match,” said Zimbabwe-born Horstmann. “A lot of the guys, including myself, haven’t played a huge amount this season, so it was great to get out there and play. A huge effort went in, with big defensive shifts, and I thought, when we did have the ball, we looked really good and threatening in attack, so that is really exciting, and we scored some really good tries, but when you put that big an emotional performance in, it is always going to be tough to take when you don’t get what you want.”

It looked a mismatch on paper, with a Chiefs team showing 13 changes from the side that beat Gloucester in the Premiership the week before, coming up against a very strong Bordeaux line-up.

However, it needed a 71st-minute try from Marco Tauleigne to finally kill off an Exeter side that had scored touchdowns through Dave Lewis and Byron McGuigan in the first half, and Bodilly in the second, with Hooley contributing 12 points with the boot.

“I thought there were periods in the match when we could have really taken it by the scruff of the neck, but for whatever reason, parts of our game didn’t function as well as we’d hoped, so that was disappointing, but we went out and gave it a really good shot,” said Horstmann.

One of those “parts” was a malfunctioning line-out, with Chiefs losing ball on five of their own throw-ins.

“Full credit to Bordeaux. They had obviously done their homework and they got up in the right areas and made a bit of a mess of our line-out,” explained Horstmann.
Exeter’s hopes of reaching the European Champions Cup quarter-finals are now dangling by a thread, and they realistically need a bonus-point win against Ospreys at Sandy Park next Sunday to stand any chance of progressing in the competition.

“This defeat makes it tougher for us, and it just makes next week’s game all the bigger,” said Horstmann. “We didn’t really do ourselves justice when we played against Ospreys at the Liberty Stadium earlier in the season, so we will get this game out of our system, have a look at it, analyse where we went wrong and then get really excited about playing them.”