Second half show delights Baxter
By Mark Stevens
22/12/19
Rob Baxter could not praise his Exeter Chiefs side enough after they moved to the top of the Gallagher Premiership table with a gutsy 31-22 victory over Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.
Although they trailed 22-14 at the break, the Chiefs produced a powerful second half showing that heaped further misery on the Tigers, who continue to languish in 11th place.
Jannes Kirsten had given the visitors the perfect start, scoring his first-ever try for the club on five minutes, but the Tigers regrouped impressively and hit the Chiefs with two tries from England winger Jonny May, plus another from debutant Jordan Taufua, to put them 19-7 up.
Don Armand reduced the deficit with a close-range score, only for George Ford to nudge over a penalty to give his side an eight-point buffer at the turn.
Baxter and his fellow coaches used the interval to realign their troops in this bruising battle - and whatever was said, it had the desired effect. Gareth Steenson - who didn’t miss a thing all day with his trusty right boot - cut the deficit with a penalty, before tries from Armand and Jonny Hill put the Chiefs in control of proceedings.
Although the Tigers looked to salvage something from the game late on, the Chiefs refused to give an inch, squeezing the life out of their hosts like an anaconda starved of food for months.
It was little wonder, therefore, that Baxter was all smile when he addressed the media at the final whistle.
“I actually didn’t think we started too badly,” he said. “We got the early try, but Leicester are a good side, with lots of good players in there. I think at one stage we looked at each other as a coaching group and thought ‘is this the day where they are going to click?’
“I say that because, all of a sudden you saw Taufua - who is as close to an All Blacks player as there is - doing things; Jonny May is scoring tries; the half-backs are running the show; the scrum is going well; and you think is this the day where we’ve bumped into them and they are putting it all together?
“That’s why I thought we did exceptionally well to stay together under that pressure. Things were going well for them, they did have some momentum about them, but we dug in enough during that first half to make sure we stayed competitive.
“After half time we aligned ourselves a little bit more like an Exeter Chiefs team. That was always going to take a half of rugby to do that, especially with the amount of changes we made. However, as we got used to each other, and the leaders manipulated what everyone was doing and got us back online, we looked a million dollars in that second half.
“That last 10 minutes, once we had created that little bit of a lead, I thought we looked at our best defensively, when in fact we should have looked most under pressure. If you saw us, we just kept pushing Leicester back at every opportunity. Ideally, I’d like to have seen us do that all day, but that can be a work-on that we have to keep adding.”
Next up for the Chiefs is the visit of defending champions Saracens to Sandy Park on December 29. The Londoners are rooted to the foot of the table following their £5.3m fine and 35-point deduction for breaching salary cap rules, but they themselves are in fine form and have the Tigers within their sights.
“We will worry about Saracens when we get in on Monday,” added Baxter. “Right now, let’s get the lads on the bus, let they have a few beers, enjoy one another’s company, and enjoy the achievement they have achieved today. We’ve got a long turnaround until Saracens, which is unusual to recent weeks, so they can decompress a little bit now and then come back in on Monday ready to put in some real hard work.”
The only dampener on a fine day’s work for the Chiefs was the sight of skipper Henry Slade being forced off on 34 minutes with a leg injury. Baxter is hopeful the England star’s issue is nothing serious and that he will be able to recover in time for the Sarries clash.
“He’s rolled his ankle and he’s hobbling around at the moment,” said Baxter. “We will get him scanned when we get back to Exeter and go from there. Hopefully, it’s not too serious.”