Exeter Chiefs: Rob Baxter calls for side to ‘unleash’ ahead of PREM season as ‘pressure’ lifted
Exeter Chiefs DOR Rob Baxter is hoping his team can 'unleash' ahead of the regular season.
Exeter Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter is still hoping to see his team ‘unleash’ come the start of the PREM season, but insists their win over Bath was a weight off their shoulders.
The Devonians came from behind to claim a 23-14 win over their West Country rivals in yesterday’s PREM Cup fixture, giving them their first win of the new campaign in the process.
‘I’ve got to find a way for them to thrive’
While the result will certainly please the Chiefs, especially in the aftermath of the 2024/25 horror show, it was anything but vintage. Bath’s two tries came directly from Exeter’s mistakes, and it took two late scores from new signings Joseph Dweba and Stephen Varney to rescue what looked like a losing cause heading into the final 10 minutes.
But, with the win now in the bank, the DoR is hopeful that it can allow them to kick on ahead of their PREM opener against Northampton Saints next weekend.
“The pressure that the lads were feeling to win didn’t allow them to thrive,” Baxter said. “I’ve got to find a way for them to thrive.
“I’ve just said to them in the changing room, if there’s something we need to do to make it easier for you, just let us know.
“The one thing I know is we’ve trained hard in pre-season, but I want to see us unleashing; I’m not quite sure we’re seeing them unleash yet. They’re trying to be aligned and trying to be precise, but we need to find that pizzazz. That’s our job to find that as we go through the season.”
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Despite Bath fielding a firm resistance and leading for large parts of the game too, Exeter dominated much of the stats. Across the game, the Chiefs held 71% possession, 86% of the territory, while gaining nearly 100 metres more than their opposition and posting just 49 tackles combined compared to Bath’s 166.
But, they couldn’t make the most of this dominance as errors cost them golden chances to score. The Chiefs made 17 entries into Bath’s 22 across the match, but only came away with 17 points from those. In comparison, Bath made just two visits into Exeter’s 22 and came away with 14 points.
“We’ve got to keep working on getting aligned as a team,” Baxter added. “The frustrating thing was that part A and part B went right, then part C kept breaking down, so we’ve just got to keep working hard at piecing things together. The more we do that, the stronger we’ll be across the game.
“If you look at the stats, we were probably dominant in most areas, but we lacked that clinical ability. It wasn’t just in the finishing, because we got held up a couple of times over the line, but some of our basic catch-pass across our backline; that’s what stuttered our performance.
“It wasn’t really any big elements; you wouldn’t really find one big issue, but there were so many crucial points in that game which we just gave up. Those are the bits that made today very difficult for us.”
