Baxter: No-brainer to have a gameplan based on tries

EXETER boss Rob Baxter has blasted the pundits who accuse his side of ‘killing the game’.

Chiefs went into this weekend on top of the Premiership having scored more tries than any other side – and boasting the league’s meanest defence.

However, their failure to crack the Champions Cup has drawn criticism from former England internationals Stuart Barnes and Brian Moore.

Both claim Chiefs are “one-dimensional” with Moore even going so far as to lambast Baxter’s side in the wake of their recemt impressive 33-13 win over Saracens. However, Baxter told

TRP: “It’s like anything, you only really get labelled as one-dimensional if people only look at one dimension of your game.

“People will talk about how we have scored more maul tries and pick-and-go tries than anyone else, but there seems to be little focus on how you get to being five metres out – you get there because of positive play in other areas of the field.

“Sometimes by putting the opposition under pressure, they concede penalties and then you’ve got a choice. Well, you can either take a kick at goal, or you can kick to the corner and carry on playing rugby and try and score the try.”

Baxter added: “I know one is more positive than the other, but some people seem to think not. Some think the kick at goal is more positive than to carry on playing. “For us, we think the positive thing is to carry on playing and to try and score tries. We like it that way, the players like it that way, they are enthused about trying to score tries.

“For me it seems a nobrainer, so why not have a game plan built around trying to score tries? That is what the name of the game is all about, isn’t it?”

Prior to Friday’s visit to Northampton, Exeter had scored 350 tries in their last 98 regular season league games dating back to season 2014/15.