Exeter suffered ‘a bit of a stuffing’ against Bordeaux-Begles admits Baxter

Rob Baxter admitted his team had suffered “a bit of a stuffing” following Exeter’s record 69-17 Investec Champions Cup defeat against Bordeaux-Begles.

A month after they shipped 64 points on home soil at the hands of tournament favourites Toulouse, the Chiefs were handed another lesson at Sandy Park.

It was Exeter’s 12th defeat from 13 Premiership and Champions Cup starts this term, their heaviest Champions Cup reversal and the most points they have conceded at home since gaining top-flight status in 2010.

“The scoreline has got away from us. It was a bit of a stuffing, wasn’t it?” Chiefs rugby director Baxter said.

“We had loads of guys fighting really hard and trying to have a big effect on the game, but it kind of stopped us doing things as a team.

“I think we settled down just after half-time and got through a bit more and you saw some periods of good play, but the minute something disrupted us, a try would happen. That’s kind of what happened today.”

Exeter were left on the verge of Champions Cup elimination after conceding 11 tries to the rampant French Top 14 leaders. The Chiefs also missed an eye-watering 47 tackles.

Chiefs need a landslide bonus-point win in their final pool fixture against Ulster to have any chance of reaching the last-16, but an early exit still beckons because of their poor points difference.

Baxter added: “Right here and now, the one thing it has taught us is that we have to work extremely hard on our foundations around set-piece, our systems in defence and attack, and spend a lot of time on those and get everyone believing in them, doing them and sticking at them.

“No-one likes to have a load of points stuffed up your shirt. That’s the reality. You have to get on with things, turn up at the next day’s training, suck it up and get on with things.

“I am not sitting here and trying to make light of it. We have got a lot of hard work to do, and we are going to get on with it. This is a collective thing.

“They (Toulouse and Bordeaux) are a class above any other team we have played.

“We probably performed better against Toulouse – we held our basics together better. Bordeaux were fantastic at capitalising on every opportunity they had.

“It has been a tough day for us, and we have got to try and move on.

“The reality is I am a professional sports coach, and we just got well beaten in a competition that we qualified for. We need to do better than that.”

Bordeaux cut loose during a dominant first half that saw captain Maxime Lucu claim a try double, while wing Damian Penaud, replacement Louis Bielle-Biarrey and hooker Maxime Lamothe also touched down.

Fly-half Matthieu Jalibert kicked three conversions, and Exeter could only muster a breakaway Paul Bampoe-Brown try in response.

The second period was similarly one-way traffic, with Penaud and Bielle-Biarrey each adding their second tries, before Penaud completed a hat-trick, while Jalibert, Cyril Cazeaux and Yann Lesgourgues also crossed. Jalibert finished with seven conversions for a 19-point haul.

Exeter, meanwhile, managed two tries for Brown-Bampoe and one by Ben Hammersley, plus a Henry Slade conversion on another sobering occasion during what has proved a season to forget.