Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
17/4/22
Exeter Chiefs Director of Rugby, Rob Baxter, was left frustrated after watching his side bow of this season’s Heineken Champions Cup with a 26-10 loss against Munster at Thomond Park.
Despite holding a slender five-point lead after the first leg, the Chiefs were picked off by the Irish province, who were inspired by the return of international stars Peter O’Mahony, Simon Zebo and Joey Carbery.
Carbery’s 21-point haul, alongside a late try from Damian De Allende, proved sufficient enough to thwart the Chiefs, whose scant reward on a tough afternoon in Limerick were tries from Sam Maunder and Jacques Vermeulen.
“I can kind of talk through the game in all kinds of ways, but there is a reality that we weren’t where we needed to be today to win that game,” said Baxter at the final whistle. “We started pretty brightly, but then our first set of defence was so far off what we were achieving last week, in terms of it’s intensity and it’s kind of collision quality, that it worried me a little bit.
“If I’m honest, that probably made me have some concerns as to how simple that momentum came and how simple the first try came. To be fair to the lads, we fought our way back into the game at times and when we score our second try, it becomes a tight contest again. However, you kind of know a game is dripping away from you when the opposition kicker can’t miss from anywhere and your kicker can’t seem to hit them from anywhere.
“You look and you think if that had been a 50-50 kicking battle, we’d have been in it to the death. That’s some of the simple things that have happened today.”
Roared on by a partisan ‘Sea of Red’ on the sidelines, Munster were inspired and the Chiefs struggled to contain their rivals for parts of the contest.
“I thought Munster were where they needed to be and we weren’t,” assessed Baxter. “I think that’s great credit to Munster and their crowd. The kind of emotion they created together I thought was fantastic for them, but we need to be better than we were today. We weren’t confrontational enough or competitive enough in enough areas!”
With the hosts dominating the breakdown, particularly the first half, it meant the Chiefs were unable to forge the kind of foot hold on the game that they craved.
“The breakdown was frustrating, but we kind of solved the problem at half time,” explained Baxter. “All of a sudden, we’re carrying momentum, we’re keeping the ball, and that’s the frustration of it all. I’m not saying things are easy, but some of the simple things that are little golden rules around how you play - and how you pull your game together, we drifted off them relatively easy in the first half and that’s a very big frustration from a coaching perspective because when we kept the ball and we kept going, we were fine.
“If we could have started the game with that clarity of thought, we probably would have seen ourselves in a lot better. As I said, we didn’t quite get the toe hold in the game that we got last week and we didn’t get that dominance around certain areas. Our scrum was okay and got us some penalties, but not quite so dominant as last time. That coupled with failings around the breakdown, missing a few kicks, and failing to build pressure has hurt us.”
With Europe gone for another season, the Chiefs must now focus all their attentions towards the Gallagher Premiership, where they now have three ‘must-win’ encounters in their quest to reach the top four.
First up is Saracens next Sunday, followed by a trip to Bristol Bears, then a final day outing against defending champions Harlequins.
Baxter added: “The Premiership becomes a weird competition for us now, just because we have three rounds left, but in between there are going to be significant breaks because we are now out of Europe. Actually, if we don’t start with a performance of collecting points at Saracens next week, you start to wonder what will happen in the last few weeks. It called all a bit flat for us, so we have to dust ourselves down quickly, get back into things and keep this season interesting for us.”