Bath were beaten by better side, says van Graan after loss to Exeter

Johann van Graan conceded that his Bath Rugby side were beaten by the better team when they faced Exeter Chiefs at Sandy Park on Sunday 10th May.

Bath Rugby missed the chance to go top of the Gallagher PREM table on Sunday 10th May, losing 35-12 to Exeter Chiefs here at Sandy Park | Photo © Richard Briggs

The Blue, Black & White would have gone to the top of the Gallagher PREM table by winning the Round 15 match.

But with Quinn Roux being shown a 20-minute red card, they lost 35-12 and remain in second spot, four points behind leaders Northampton Saints, but with third-placed Leicester Tigers breathing down their necks.

After the setback in Devon, van Graan – Bath’s head of rugby – said: “It’s always difficult to come here, and I thought Exeter put us under a huge amount of pressure.

“We got beaten by the better team on the day and I thought we handled the the red card pretty well for that 20 minutes.

“We had an opportunity just before half-time which we didn’t finish and had to win in the second half.

“[With] 15 minutes to go it was a one-score game and we lost the line-out on the far side.

“In this league, if you are 99% there you get punished – and Exeter Chiefs punished us in that last 10 minutes [by scoring 10 points].”

In the lead-up to the match, Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter praised Bath.

But after his team’s victory – which leaves them in fourth place in the standings, four points adrift of the Blue, Black & White with three rounds of matches to go – he said: “We got a lot right today and the way the lads went out around that second half was fantastic.

“It was a second half that was almost built for Bath with the scoreline pretty tight, big breeze heading straight down the field.

“For the first 20 minutes, the game was played at our tempo. Then there was about 20 minutes where Bath seized control and the game got played at their tempo.

“And then for a fair bit of the second half there was only spells where it wasn’t about us.

“We started the game really well, we put some pretty impressive sets of play together, we carried hard, we won some of those physical battles you have to win around the contact area.

“I thought we were good all through the game. But some of the way we stayed in the fight through the second half and eventually came out on top, especially the way we built our progress through the scrum over the course of the game, was very impressive, and we almost nullified their bomb squad-type effect a little bit.

“I’m really impressed with the guys. They’ve turned up to win a game of rugby.

“They’ve turned up as winners today, they haven’t turned up being afraid to lose, they’ve turned up to win the game, they’ve played in a way to win the game and it’s paid off for them in spades.

“In the context of the season and the last three or four weeks, it’s huge.

“A poor result for us today, on the back of a good performance and a decent result against Northampton at home [a 35-28  defeat in the PREM], obviously then the European fixture [a 29-12 loss at Ulster Rugby in the Challenge Cup] and Gloucester away [a 34-31 reverse in the PREM], however you want to look at it, it would feel like the season was petering out a little bit.

“That’s just flipped that on its head now because the season isn’t petering out at all.”