Rob Baxter's 'quite poor' admission after sick Exeter get paddled

Gloucester head coach George Skivington praised the impact his big-name new signings have already made after they swept aside Exeter Chiefs 45-24 at Sandy Park.

New skipper and hooker Dewi Lake scored two tries, while his Wales international team-mate Jac Morgan and South African lock Jean Kleyn also made big contributions to the impressive bonus-point victory.

Skivington said: “The result is great, but what we saw in character, particularly in some of those defensive sets from the boys, is a good snapshot of what we have asked them to go after this year.

“It is hopefully something the guys we have brought in, combined with the quality we have known for a number of years, will give us.

“I thought Dewi did well, Jac had a lot of good moments in the game in the nitty gritty, and Jean really showed his presence in the first half, but I thought we did well across the board.

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“We have talked a lot about certain behaviours we want to see and things we are going after, but you can only talk about it so much and you have got to see it on the field.”

Skivington was also full of praise for the work new defence coach Joel Tomkins has done with the squad.

He added: “Exeter did have us under a lot of pressure at stages, particularly in the second half, and then we go down to 14 men, and there is a lot of defending to do, but the way the boys bounced up, we have got to give Joel a lot of credit for coming in and getting that.

“They hit hard and the work-rate off the ball was brilliant. It is only round one but is it a good snapshot of what we have gone after and hopefully we can keep that going.”

Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter refused to blame the defeat on an illness-ravaged build-up to the game which saw a player drop out of the expected 23 almost every day in the week leading up to the match.

He said: “If it had been a real battle and we had tried really hard with most of the stuff we said we were going to do, and Gloucester came through on top, then I would have said ‘fair play, we have done pretty well considering the issues we had’, but I think we were a good notch below that and I thought we were quite poor.

“We didn’t have a lot of ambition into the wind, we kicked poorly and at times when we didn’t need to, we didn’t even look to counter, and Dave Walder (attack coach) has been working very hard on that during the last few weeks.

“Ultimately we just slowly gave Gloucester more and more opportunities, and they were good, they were clinical, they looked powerful at times, and we looked a little lacking in composure and direction as to how we wanted to attack the game.”