Misfiring Exeter please Baxter by finally seizing the moment
Pity the Gallagher Premiership. Saracens apart, what hope does the rest of the league have when Exeter can play this poorly for such long stretches and still retain their 100 per cent record?
The Chiefs were unrecognisable from the outfit that had accrued 24 points from a possible 25 previously. The lineout spluttered throughout and that same sloppiness infected many other aspects of the play.
Typically, Exeter treat possession like the British Museum regards the Elgin Marbles. Here they coughed up turnover after turnover through loose kicks and even looser passes. And still they racked up another thumping win, complete with bonus point, through tries from the outstanding Stu Townsend, Don Armand, Dave Ewers, Ian Whitten and Jack Nowell.
“The way we put the game together wasn’t quite there today,” Rob Baxter, the Exeter director of rugby, said. “It was a bit of a bitty performance and our lineout didn’t function as we would have liked it to. The players said they felt they could win the game at half-time and they took responsibility in what was a really confrontational game of rugby. We made a lot of handling errors, but I can’t speak highly enough of the players for the way they stood up and took hold of the situation in the second half.”
For Bath, this defeat will feel particularly chastening. In preparation for this game, director of rugby Todd Blackadder made 13 changes for last week’s trip to Saracens, which resulted in a 50-27 hiding.
His gamble did not pay off. For much of the first hour they had the lead, but when Exeter dropped the hammer in the final quarter the home side faded away. “We actually played too wide at times and this competition is all about fine margins,” Blackadder said. “I don’t think it was tiredness late on at all, we were just put under pressure and Exeter took their chances.”
After a scrappy opening full of aimless kicks, collapsed scrums and dropped passes, Bath conjured the opening try. Moving the ball from left to right along the halfway line Tom Ellis fed Semesa Rokoduguni who kicked ahead. Fly-half Rhys Priestland won the footrace to put Bath 10-0 up.
That advantage was wiped out within six painful minutes. Gareth Steenson got Exeter on the scoreboard with a penalty from a scrum before Freddie Burns threw an ugly intercept to Townsend, who had too much pace for the converted full-back to redeem his mistake.
Although Burns did nudge Bath back in front with a penalty, it was Exeter who went into half-time ahead. Steenson won the initial turnover and after patiently recycling possession, the fly-half saw the opportunity he had been waiting for, threading a diagonal grubber for Armand to touch down.
Burns and Steenson exchanged a pair of penalties to start the second half, but Bath were down to 14 after Rokoduguni was adjudged to have deliberately knocked on Steenson’s long pass. Burns’ fourth penalty put Bath back in front before winning a crucial turnover penalty on Santiago Cordero on his own tryline.
The pressure would eventually tell. This time the Chiefs’ lineout operation functioned exactly as it usually does, with flanker Ewers being driven over.
Exeter smelt blood and immediately capitalised, with forwards and backs combining to spread the play wide for replacement Whitten to go over. Then came a gorgeous counter-attack led by Henry Slade, who again bolstered his England prospects. The outside-centre nearly went coast to coast before the ball was recycled for Nowell to go over.
Facing another heavy defeat, Bath did rally in the closing stages, replacement scrum-half Chris Cook finished a neat wraparound move and Joe Cokanasiga had another chalked off by the TMO but the game was long gone by that point.
With domestic opposition proving little competition, next week’s visit of Munster in the Heineken Cup should provide Exeter with a proper test of their mettle.