Regardless of a morale-boosting 42-14 Gallagher Premiership a second-string Northampton, Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter was dissatisfied in regards to the paucity of his facet’s efficiency at Sandy Park.
Forward of their European Cup last look in Cardiff in a fortnight’s in the past, Saints rested nearly all their first-choice line-up however Chiefs nonetheless wanted an enormous response after their file 79-17 defeat by the hands of Gloucester of their final league outing.
That outcome noticed the departure of two of their coaches with Baxter assuming his former function as hands-on head coach.
Paul Brown-Bampoe and Harvey Skinner every scored two tries, whereas Nick Lilley and Martin Moloney had been additionally on the try-scoring sheet, with Henry Slade kicking 5 conversions and Josh Hodge one.
Jake Garside and Tom Lockett crossed over for Northampton – with each transformed by Tom James – however the last scoreline was massively flattering to Exeter, who had been sorely examined by a facet which contained six debutants of their matchday 23.
Baxter said: “That was barely a regulation win against a wholly second-string side so I’ve issued a 10-minute b******ing to the players in the changing room as their performance was nowhere near good enough.
“There were very basic mistakes in there; our pure error count will be through the roof as will our penalty count.
“The first rule is not to beat yourself, the opposition have to beat you, but we are beating ourselves in many areas.
“We just can’t keep the ball and I will be repeatedly telling the players that I need more from them.
“We want to contest for a top-four spot next season but on that performance we are miles off and the next two weeks against sides in contention for the play-offs will be hugely challenging with pre-season training needing to be harder.”
In contrast, Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson was upbeat following the hassle of his younger facet.
He stated: “I’m pissed off on the last scoreline however filled with admiration for the quantity of effort we put in.
“We wished to have an actual crack at it however it wasn’t excellent as there have been a whole lot of errors, a few which we had been actually punished for.
“Nonetheless we confirmed a whole lot of coronary heart in opposition to a fully-loaded Exeter, who badly wanted to win and our efficiency speaks volumes for the energy of our squad.
“We have now Saracens subsequent week and can want a powerful facet to placed on an honest present for our followers in our final dwelling recreation of the season however choice with the European last looming is a tremendous balancing act, particularly having had a glut of accidents within the again row and again three.”
