Cullen proud, Baxter refuses to give up


Leinster head coach Leo Cullen was full of pride after his side completed the double over Exeter to strengthen their grip of Pool 3.

The 22-17 victory at the Aviva Stadium puts them on 18 points, with Montpellier second on 13 and Exeter on nine following these two losses.

After the result, Cullen was thrilled with his charges as they dug deep to come from behind and now return to PRO14 action on a positive note.

"I'm very proud of the players. Exeter are a very good team, they were well up for the game and we lacked composure in the first half," he said.

"We want to progress in the competition but we have to be a lot better. We have got four wins from four and there is still a lot of work to do."

One concern was the loss of Jonathan Sexton after he failed his head injury assessment, but Cullen gave a positive update on the fly-half.

"Johnny was in the dressing room at half-time taking to Ross, going through the game plan. Johnny will go through his return-to-play but he looks fine. Ross steered us around the pitch pretty well in the second half," he said.

Meanwhile, Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter is not giving up hope of making it out of the pool, saying: "We've two tough games to go, we'll go flat out and see what the pool brings. We've qualified in extraordinary circumstances before, more extraordinary than this.

"We're annoyed with the soft points we gave up at the end of the first half, the two penalties kept Leinster in it at 17-9. But I can see the improvements we have made over the last seven days. The guys should get better as a result of today."

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