Chiefs are played off the Park...
CLERMONT Auvergne became only the second club to win at Sandy Park in 21 months, outclassing Exeter in their opening Champions Cup tie.
The French side, who lead the Top 14, ran in five converted tries against the injury-hit Chiefs.
Exeter scored a late consolation try through centre Sam Hill, but head coach Rob Baxter was disappointed with his side’s display and feels they are suffering a hangover from last season’s success of reaching the Premiership final.
“I don’t think that was anything like the level of performance we can achieve or have achieved in the past,” he said. “We huffed and puffed at times, but there were a lot of errors in there, and our Achilles heel this season of conceding soft points out of innocuous situations reared its head again.
“We are still probably a team dealing with having a really good season for the first time, and we are not dealing with it as well as we could.”
Exeter more than matched Clermont up front in the first half, with Luke CowanDickie to the fore before he limped off with a twisted ankle.
They took the lead with a seventh-minute, Gareth Steenson penalty, but Clermont’s deadly back division helped them bag three tries before the break.
The first had an element of good fortune about it, with Wesley Fofana seeing his pass rebound off the head of Benjamin Kayser back into his arms, before Noa Nakaitaci put Julien Bardy in for the try.
Three minutes later, Steenson failed to gather Morgan Parra’s beautifully judged box kick, and Nakaitaci finished off an overlap.
Exeter were unlucky to see a possible try for Ian Whitten ruled out when he was deemed to be slightly in front of Dave Lewis when the scrum-half charged down David Strettle’s hurried clearance kick.
Camille Lopez then unlocked the Exeter defence with a dummy and fed Fofana to score, giving Clermont a commanding 21-3 interval lead.
It took them only three minutes of the second period to secure the bonus point with a touchdown by Nick Abendanon, before Exeter enjoyed a purple patch.
They camped on the visitors’ line and lock Flip van der Merwe was sin-binned after repeated infringements by Clermont, but the pressure came to nothing.
Fofana’s second try then ended any hopes they had of salvaging a losing bonus point.
EXETER – Try: Hill. Pen: Steenson. CLERMONT – Tries: Bardy, Nakaitaci, Fofana (2), Abendanon. Cons: Parra (5).