Chiefs flanker Ben White targets the Tigers

Aussie flanker Ben White says Exeter Chiefs cannot wait to get stuck into Leicester Tigers in their latest Aviva Premiership encounter this Sunday (2pm).

Buoyed by back-to-back league wins over London Wasps and London Irish, the Chiefs are now busy preparing themselves for the visit of the defending champions to Sandy Park.

It's a fixture which is sure to test the credentials of the Devon club - particularly given the currently visitors sit second in the standings - but White says recent form has given him and his team-mates a real belief they can topple Richard Cockerill's men.

“The Tigers are an amazing team and we need to step up a gear and have a real go at them,” said White, who joined the Chiefs in 2011 after five years with RaboDirect Pro12 side Cardiff Blues.

“It was great to back up our win over Wasps with victory at London Irish. We don’t want to go on a roller-coaster up and down. We want to keep going up and up and up, and we took another step forward on Saturday. The Premiership is the hardest competition and four points is awesome and should help push us up the table.”

However, White knows the Chiefs can ill afford to allow the Tigers the same sort of lead they afforded to Irish during the second half of last week's game at the Madejski Stadium. Indeed, with just over 20 minutes remaining, Exeter trailed 23-12 and were in danger of slipping to their second Premiership defeat of the season.

The Chiefs, though, are made of stern stuff and when Exiles prop John Yapp was sin-binned for a professional foul, they duly made their numerical advantage tell as they claimed converted scores through skipper Dean Mumm and White himself.

"I think the boys were maybe trying a bit too hard in the first half. We were just not playing smart, and maybe not respecting the ball as much as we should have been,” explained 29-year-old White.
“Penalties are crucial, and we have just got to sharpen up on that for this weekend against Leicester.

“Then we lost Tom James, and that hit us hard, because Tom Johnson had to drop to the backs, and then Irish had a couple of good scrums, and put us under pressure.”

But as Exeter duly noted, playing with a man down in the top flight is far from easy and the Chiefs duly made Irish pay for Yapp's persistent indiscretion.

“The boys were playing for each other, we put all the stuff together, had a couple of good scrums, a couple of good phases and it worked out for us,” said White. For my try it was a great scrum by the boys, a great pick by Tom Johnson, and the ball popped up to me, and I will take that one."