Baxter pleased with Sharks victory
By Mark Stevens
16/9/18
Three games, three bonus point victories.
It’s been the dream start for Exeter Chiefs in this season’s Gallagher Premiership, but Director of Rugby Rob Baxter is refusing to go overboard about things in the wake of his side’s latest success.
Saturday’s 35-18 victory over Sale Sharks looks comfortable enough, but for long periods of the match last season’s beaten finalists were given a decent work-out by the visitors at Sandy Park.
In the end, the Chiefs had enough in the tank - despite making nine changes to their starting XV from that of Wasps the previous week - to overcome that threat and maintain their position at the summit of the table.
Tries from Santiago Cordero, Jonny Hill, Jack Maunder, Alex Cuthbert and Tom Lawday did much of the damage with Joe Simmonds and Gareth Steenson sharing the remainder of the points, converting all five tries with their trusty right boots.
In reply, Sale Sharks offered plenty in an entertaining fixture and they will have headed home thinking they could have at least secured some kind of losing bonus point for their afternoon’s toil in Devon. They butchered two certain scores, but did cross the try-line twice through Marland Yarde and Bryn Evans. Fly-half AJ MacGinty completed their scoring with two penalties and a conversion.
Post-game, Baxter reflected on this latest success, but said that his side would need to be stronger moving forward as tough hurdles lie in wait over the coming weeks.
“You do have to be pretty pleased when you look at a winning side which changes nine starters from the previous week and then goes out and gets another five-point win in the next game,” said Baxter. “That shows what is going on squad-wise right now.
“Having said that, I don’t think today was as good a performance as that against Leicester here a fortnight ago. Sometimes, though, you just have to get on with it and that’s what the players did today. To lose Matt Kvesic and Sam Simmonds literally this morning, that’s take a fair bit of shifting around. Dave Dennis got involved without thinking he was any part of the match-day 23 for quite a while.
“In a way you can see how those kind of changes can affect the quality of what you do. We also had two young guys [Lawday and Sean Lonsdale] come into the back-row who were pretty inexperienced, yet we’ve still seen a five-point win, so that’s all got to be very pleasing for us.
But whilst Baxter was pleased to accrue another maximum haul, he acknowledged that areas of the Chiefs game were far from perfect and that things would need to be addressed ahead of this Friday’s lengthy trip up to Newcastle Falcons.
“Taking 15 points from your first three games gives you a nice foundation,” said Baxter. “However, our clear-out at times today was not the level it needs to be at. Also, our ball presentation and our tackle completion wasn’t the standard we expect, so those are things we can work on, both as individuals and collectively.
“As a team we can’t not want to progress. We go up to Newcastle next week and having watch them this week, they look a tough side, particularly at home. They have plenty of energy and physicality, so we can’t go up there and have as quiet a first half as we did today, just because we will leave ourselves with too much to do.
“What we have to do is reset ourselves physically and mentally for what will be another tough challenge, but that is what the Premiership is all about. It will be the same for Newcastle after their game today, but it’s up to us to get ourselves ready and go again.”