Match Reaction - Rob Baxter
By Mark Stevens
26/3/23
Exeter Director of Rugby Rob Baxter struggled to contain his anger as he delivered a withering verdict on the Chiefs’ 36-19 Gallagher Premiership defeat at Bath.
It was a result that left the Devonians eight points adrift of the play-off places with just three games left – and two of those fixtures are away against sides currently in the top four, Leicester and London Irish.
Given that Bath had lost five successive league matches and not won in the Premiership this year, the Chiefs were strong favourites to inflict further misery on them. But the visitors ended up conceding five tries and now face a major task to recover in time for next weekend’s Heineken Champions Cup round-of-16 clash against Montpellier.
“We have to have a good look at each other because we are killing each other,” said Baxter. “We can’t perform as a team because individually we are killing each other. I am at that stage when I am almost thinking we have got to change the personnel.
“We have got guys now who are champing at the bit and expecting to be there or thereabouts as players move on next season, and I just said to the lads ‘the power you have got as a player is your performance’.
“They perform and it shows how much they want things and how good they want to be. The power I have got is selection."
Revealing what he said in the changing rooms at the Rec post match, Baxter said: “I thought ‘do I talk honestly about today or say we have had a bad day at the office, a big day next week, last 16 of Europe, bang that in and it is a quarter-final’, but I just could not say that to the players.
“I said ‘I am going to have to be honest, I don’t really care about morale for next week, that was poor’.
“We have come away to the team that is bottom of the Premiership – that is not taking anything away from Bath. They grew, and I was expecting us to grow across the 80 minutes.
“It never looked like we were going to make the game about us. It was a litany of errors. We have got a lot to work on in a week, and the most important thing is how the players turn up on Tuesday. Did we look like a good team today? I don’t think we can say any player had a good game in any facet.”
Bath claimed tries from centres Cameron Redpath and Ollie Lawrence, prop Beno Obano, wing Joe Cokanasiga and hooker Tom Dunn, while scrum-half Ben Spencer kicked four conversions and Piers Francis landed a late penalty.
Exeter led until just before half-time, yet they had to content themselves with tries for centre Solomone Kata, prop Scott Sio and replacement hooker Jack Yeandle, with England centre Henry Slade adding two conversions.