Baxter reacts to final loss
By Mark Stevens
26/5/18
Rob Baxter refused to be too downbeat despite seeing his Exeter Chiefs side surrender their grip on the Aviva Premiership to rivals Saracens at Twickenham.
Hopes of replicating their success of 12 months ago were ended as the Londoners reclaimed English Rugby’s prized crown by securing a 27-10 victory, thanks in the main to tries from Billy Vunipola, Chris Wyles (2) and Nathan Earle.
The Chiefs fired the odd shot through a Joe Simmonds penalty and a converted Gareth Steenson try, but that was all they could muster on an afternoon when they were distinctly second best for much of this bruising contest.
Asked post match if it was performance where his side may have left a little bit in the tank, Baxter replied: “A little bit. I don’t want to sit here and say it was our best performance of the season because I don’t think it was, but I’m a huge believer that finals are about the winners.
“Saracens were very good, I thought they pinned their game together better than we did. Their management of the game, the moments they came up with and how they worked their pressure and exploited us was very good. We didn’t handle that well enough all game.
“I can be churlish and talk about the bits and pieces we didn’t do well or what I was disappointed with, but ultimately, a fair bit of credit for that has to come down to Saracens. Some of the things we got wrong, you can put that down to the pressure on the scoreboard from what Saracens were doing.
“That’s what we’ve got to learn from, I can honestly say we’ve got to move forward now and the players have got to do the same. The most pleasing thing for me today was that the changing room felt a lot different to two years ago. When we lost two years ago, it just felt okay to be there, it really did, but it genuinely didn’t feel a nice place just now. That’s not because the players don’t feel like they’ve had a good season, they’ve had a good season and have achieved some things this year that we’ve never done before as a side, but it didn’t feel like a changing room that was happy, pleased or at the end of a journey.
“If I’m really honest, the most pleasing thing for me moving forward is that, on average, we were the youngest Premiership team in the competition this year and we’ve got to the final. We finished top of the league and from a coach’s perspective you’ve got to be massively enthusiastic about that.
“We’ve got to the final, we’ve had a tough experience in the semi-final and came through that very well, but we’ve still got an awful lot of players in that group who are learning to become international standard and the standard that wins Premierships and are not yet reaching their potential. We’ve got to make sure we keep driving them as hard as we can.”
With just four of last season’s starting line-up taking to the field for this latest final, Baxter was asked if a lack of experience may have come back to haunt him and his team.
The Chiefs Director of Rugby replied: “No because my job isn’t today. My job is the future of Exeter Chiefs, it always has been from the minute I took the job. These are the steps you take along the way.
“If I’d have diverted from the reasons why the changes to the team happened and the reason players have come through, a. I wouldn’t have been true to myself and the things we do at the club, and b. I would have halted our progress going forward. More than anything, you’d have seen guys potentially who are now international players not even come on the scene; Sam Simmonds has played international rugby, what am I going to do, not pick him because Thomas Waldrom’s around? It doesn’t work like that.
“I think that bit, I’m very comfortable with. I’m very comfortable with the changes that have happened. Could we have done one or two moments or one or two things differently? Of course we could. I’m not saying that’s not the case but I’m not going to sit here and say with hindsight from about three weeks ago I should have manipulated the same XV that played last year back into that team.
“That’s just not something I do, I’ve got to go way beyond that and start looking at guys who can win us the next Premiership. I just said to the players, you’ve got choices now – when you lose a Premiership final, you can decide to be part of a team that’s going to win the next Premiership for Exeter, or you can let things slip you by, you can have a blow, you’ve done quite well the last three years. Those are the guys that will slip by.”