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Rob Baxter reacts to Exeter Chiefs' second win of the season
By PA
Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter was delighted for scrum-half Stu Townsend after the Devon side marked his 100th top-flight appearance for the club with only their second Gallagher Premiership win of the season.
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Townsend was named man of the match in the 31-22 victory over Saracens as the Chiefs ran in five tries.
Baxter said: “It is a relief but there is also an enjoyment factor, and I am so pleased for Stu more than anything else.”
He added: “We’ve been talking about trying to re-establish our DNA and what it means to be a Chief, and I think we started to see that today.
“There was a relentlessness to everything we did and it actually paid off in the end. It’s not our emotion that’s been our problem, we’ve just got to make sure our rugby levels and our decision-making is just as good.
“It’s a win and it’s given us a feel-good factor that we can take into the Premiership Cup and hopefully beyond.
“Don’t get me wrong, though, I thought Saracens were typically Saracens. Even with a much changed-up team, you know they kind of slot together and they don’t get too much wrong.
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“We knew we were in a pressure situation today. The lads were as jittery as anything. Right from the first kick-off we throw them the ball, but I kind of knew the game would be like that at times.
“I was just hoping that we would grow across the 80 minutes and almost believe in ourselves that, come the end, we would find a way to win, which is what we did.”
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall, who had to field a much-weakened side, commented: “It doesn’t feel like a Premiership weekend is necessary on a weekend like this, when there are international camps and there are players away, when it is only an 18-game regular season.
“We said before the game that in lots of ways the outcome was immaterial to what we wanted from the game as we knew that come the end of the Six Nations when the Premiership recommences, we were going to be in the mix anyway, with seven games to go.
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“We had a lot of unavailability through international call-ups and the big casualty list we have got, and we brought a bit of a younger and inexperienced team and we asked them to play big today and not play within themselves, and show how good they are, and not be cautious, and I thought they were wonderful.
“The energy in the team, in the first 40 minutes in particular, was absolutely outstanding. We had senior players who showed the way and we had younger players who played big like we asked them to, and that continued in the second half.
“And then we had that unfortunate 45 seconds or so where they scored a try from the halfway line and then another from the restart, and that’s 14 points in no time at all.
“The whole energy of the ground changed and that was the game really.
“But in terms of what we wanted, which was a group of older and younger players getting stuck in, we got that.”
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