Leicester's Richard Cockerill paid tribute to Exeter after the Chiefs gave the Aviva Premiership champions a fright.
Leicester boss hails newcomers after scare at Welford Road
Leicester director of rugby Richard Cockerill paid tribute to Exeter after the newly-promoted side gave the Aviva Premiership champions a scare at Welford Road.
The Tigers were trailing 27-16 with 16 minutes to play before Cockerill's side ran in three late tries to claim a 37-27 bonus-point win.
Afterwards the Leicester boss gave credit to the visitors for their play, while also admitting his side need to improve before facing Wasps next weekend.
He said: "I didn't know what to expect (from Exeter) but I do now and so does the rest of the Premiership.
"You have to give them a huge amount of credit; they gave us an almighty fright. We could talk about how poor we were, but you have to give them credit and they are a good team who will cause a lot of problems for a lot of people.
"For them to come here and play like that and get nothing out of the game must be sickening, they deserved something."
He added: "They made it very tough for us but we need to be better at certain things and up the ante.
"The line-out is a concern because you have field position and then you don't win the ball, or if you do it's scrappy.
"For me it's a repeat of pre-season and last week (against Northampton). You have to keep hold of the ball and build pressure, and in defence we were a little soft and were falling off tackles, but we will fix that.
"Everybody is happy with the five points but not the performance. But I won't walk away and say we were poor, they were bloody good."
Baxter angry
Exeter head coach Rob Baxter agreed with Cockerill's assessment that his side merited at least a bonus point for their efforts.
"I am a bit angry we haven't come away with anything, but we did a lot of really good things, we scored three tries at Welford Road but we still haven't come away with a bonus point, which was the very least we deserved," he said.
"The truth of it was we played very well for large parts of the game but the momentum got away from us in the last 20 minutes due to some poor decision-making and some little errors."
Baxter also felt his side's fearless display was down to their lack of top-flight experience.
"We have no baggage in the Premiership so everything is an adventure and we have said we are gong to enjoy this season," he continued.
"We had never played Leicester before in a Premiership game so we were going to give it our all, and we scored some nice tries off stuff we had looked at in the week.
"But the penalty count went against us massively, especially in that last 20 minutes, and that is something we need to see if we need to work on ourselves or, if we need to, have a chat with the refs."
