Baxter unruffled over delayed kick-off as clinical Exeter secure home semi-final
As they filed off the Kingsholm pitch at full time, a bonus-point win in their back pockets, Exeter were briefly top of the Premiership at the end of the regular season for the first time since their promotion to the top flight in 2010 and looking at a home semi-final against Leicester.
Fifteen minutes later, they were back in second spot and staring down the barrel of a home semi-final against European champions Saracens on May 2. It was a cruel outcome, all things considered. Not that Rob Baxter, Exeter’s phlegmatic head coach, was complaining.
Baxter might have felt justified in doing so. The delayed kick-off at the Ricoh Arena meant Wasps’ players would have known the score from Kingsholm. They would have known they needed a bonus-point try if they wanted to finish top of the table and avoid Saracens in the semi-finals.
That was the whole point of everyone kicking off at the same time – to avoid the possibility that any one team might be at an advantage.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Baxter shrugged. “If you’re playing a really good team – as Wasps were against Saracens – you are going to be taking points whenever you can to guarantee a win and a home semi-final.
“If it helped them it helped them but it’s not something for me to be concerned about. These things happen. We had a delayed kick-off at Sandy Park a couple of weeks ago. And if we had been at Sandy Park today and we had had trouble I would have expected the game to be delayed. We came here and did what we could do and got a five-point win. And they did what they could do and got a five-point win. I’ve got no problem with it.”
Baxter’s positive reaction came as little surprise. Exeter have been a breath of fresh air since their promotion seven years ago, the Premiership’s greatest success story bar none. They have improved year on year through stable leadership and sound coaching, developing a core of homegrown players, to find themselves in the position they are now in. Last year they made the Premiership final only to lose to Saracens. This time they face Mark McCall’s men in a semi-final.
Baxter said that more than the silverware, it was the fact that Exeter were now expecting themselves to be in this position which he found most pleasing.
Even to finish second this year they needed to put together an extraordinary run – this was their eighth consecutive five-point win and, as Baxter pointed out, had they lost any one of those they would now be outside the top two and playing an away semi-final.
Those are the margins in the tightest Premiership of all time. Yet Exeter are consistently finding themselves on the right side of those margins.
Here, after finding themselves 15-13 down at half time they came on strong in the second half, scoring three times through Ben Moon, James Short and Will Chudley, to emerge yet again with the bonus point. “We’re getting more and more confident that if the games are very close at half-time, we can do something,” Baxter noted.
The Chiefs should really have been further behind at the break. Despite having the first chance of the game, Ollie Devoto and Short managing to bungle a try-scoring opportunity, it was indisputably Gloucester’s half.
Lewis Ludlow touched down for an early try after collecting Jonny May’s offload and Gloucester could have had a second moments later when Billy Twelvetrees sent Freddie Clarke scampering clear down the right touchline. His attempted pass back inside to Twelvetrees was intercepted by Stuart Townsend.
Exeter’s ‘interception curse’ – seven tries conceded their last six games – was in full swing. After Greig Laidlaw and Gareth Steenson had traded two penalties apiece, May picked off an attempted Steenson pass to romp clear from halfway. Ian Whitten reduced the arrears with a fine solo try, shimmying his way through a pack of defenders, before the centre prevented yet another intercept try with a glorious taptackle on Charlie Sharples.
The second half, though, belonged to Exeter, Jack Nowell’s fall as he tried to prevent May’s second try of the game the only moment of real concern against a Gloucester team with one eye on next Friday’s Challenge Cup final against Stade Français at Murrayfield.