Harlequins director of rugby Conor O'Shea praised Rory Clegg's "bottle" after the fly-half landed a late penalty to earn an 11-9 win at Exeter Chiefs.
Baxter happy with Chiefs' battling performance
Harlequins director of rugby Conor O'Shea praised Rory Clegg's "bottle" after the fly-half landed a late penalty to earn an 11-9 win at Exeter Chiefs.
The England Saxon, who had earlier missed five kicks out of six, finally found his range and slotted a late 30-metre attempt from out wide.
O'Shea said: "Rory Clegg showed incredible bottle and you have to separate things with a fly-half - his general play bar one or two touch kicks, the way that he marshalled the team and got a pattern going was magnificent.
"He is an 80%-plus goal kicker - he wasn't today, you have those days. His fault will be that he took on two early kicks into a diagonal breeze which he probably shouldn't have but he showed incredible bottle to land a really difficult kick."
Quins had lost in the league for the first time this season against Saracens on Tuesday and O'Shea added: "Four days after our last game, I thought we played with incredible ambition, some good line breaks and off-loading, and I thought that we should have won the game quite comfortably.
"But they stayed in the game and we knew they would looking at their record of coming back in the second half - look what they did against Sale and the Dragons - but I thought we played some magnificent rugby.
"But I credit the guys; to give away a penalty to put them into the lead with six minutes to go (and come back), these are the wins. This is a tough place to come; I was not expecting it to be easy and it wasn't."
Grit
Exeter's head coach Rob Baxter admitted: "I can't stand here and say that we should have won the game.
"You can't expect an opposition goal-kicker in the Premiership to miss that many opportunities.
"But that said, we finished with our usual grit and determination and worked hard to conjure a match-winning moment a couple of minutes later in the game.
"I am a little disappointed, primarily with our discipline because we're not a side that just go in the side of breakdowns and cough up soft penalties. We pride ourselves on making teams work very hard for their points.
"I'm pleased with our endeavour; I'm pleased we were in it at the end and I'm pleased that there was an opportunity to win it at the end, but I am disappointed with elements of our game. "
