Exeter Chiefs beaten in try-fest at Bristol Bears

The final outcome was another defeat in a long and painful league campaign for Exeter Chiefs, but a deeper dive into this game reveals an encouraging resilience and attacking enterprise from their display at Bristol Bears.

The hosts are locked in a thrilling title scrap with Bath and that showed in a blistering start to the game, as Bristol bagged their bonus point with four tries in the opening 16 minutes, the second fastest in Premiership history.

To their immense credit, Exeter somehow stayed with their rampant hosts and also wrapped up a bonus point by the midway point, with tries from Martin Moloney, Henry Slade, Dafydd Jenkins and Josh Hodge.

The half-time score of 40-28 reflected an extraordinary game of rugby and the Chiefs were given the added bonus of playing against 14 men after a red card was shown to Argentinian Santiago Grondona.

Unfortunately, there was no holding back the Bristol tide. Exeter did score further tries through Jack Yeandle and Will Rigg, but the Bears kept crossing the line, eventually completing a 52-38 victory to keep the Chiefs firmly entrenched in the bottom two alongside Newcastle Falcons.

Exeter Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter told BBC Radio Devon: "I'm super proud of the lads. We had some highs and lows in that game but we stuck at it. We showed some real resilience and we're going to get better.

"I don't mind setting records but I'd prefer to set them in a slightly different way. It was a little bit of a crazy opener and fair play to Bristol.

"They've got a particular attacking style that's really difficult to deal with, they're really great in attack. I guess if I wasn't wearing this cap, it would've been nice to watch that."