Leicester director of rugby Richard Cockerill remained positive despite watching his side slip to a 35-10 LV= Cup defeat to Exeter.
Leicester boss praises second-half performance
Leicester director of rugby Richard Cockerill remained positive despite watching his side slip to a 35-10 LV= Cup defeat to Exeter.
The try-scoring bonus point victory saw the Chiefs move to the top of Pool Four after the contest at Sandy Park on Saturday.
Hooker Neil Clark, flanker Dave Ewers, lock Chad Slade and scrum-half Haydn Thomas all scored tries in the first half as the hosts took a 28-0 lead by the interval.
But Cockerill was encouraged by some of the individual performances he saw despite the lopsided scoreline.
"In the second half we regrouped pretty well and the lads had a crack and we scored two tries so it was a lot more positive," he said.
Youth
"There were lots of young guys out there and some senior guys coming back from injury.
"This was the perfect springboard for us to see where guys are physically and mentally and to see how much bottle they have really - and some guys came through pretty well.
"Exeter are a good side. They picked a number of first choice players for the game and they work very hard for each other.
"They play a certain way and if you don't control the ball against them they are difficult to play against."
Exeter backs coach Ali Hepher still thinks that the Chiefs should have been more ruthless against a Tigers side containing several inexperienced youngsters.
Quality
Hepher said: "We ask the guys for a performance no matter what the opposition and we know that Leicester are a quality side, with some quality youngsters coming through, so obviously we are happy with the victory.
"This competition is not Leicester's biggest priority but you can only beat what is in front of you and our guys did a great job, showed great enthusiasm and commitment throughout the game.
"A big learn for us this week would be to close the game out because Leicester were obviously going to run everything and try to keep the ball. We equally needed to keep ball when we got it.
"We kicked it away a couple of times when we didn't need to and there was still opportunities to run from deep. That's a learning curve and we have to get better at that but we will get there.
"We are trying to move our game on every week. We tried some new stuff in this game and we analyse it and look at different options for different opposition.
"Full credit to this set of guys who put their hands up and executed those plays really well."
