Jonathan Mills insists London Welsh will have a lot of work to do ahead of next week’s trip to Gloucester after they fell to a 42-15 LV= Cup defeat to Exeter Chiefs at the Kassam Stadium, writes Nate Saunders.

Despite leading 9-8 at half-time and being within touching distance for much of the game, Welsh were limited to just 15 points from the boot of Gordon Ross.
 

A Mark Foster try in the second half opened the floodgates and Nic Sestaret and Jack Nowell both grabbed two tries to ease away and secure a bonus-point victory.
 

And with Lyn Jones only making six changes to the side which beat Bath last week Mills admitted he expected a lot better from his side.
 

“It wasn’t the way we wanted to start our LV= Cup campaign at all but fair play to Exeter, they came here and they played and threw the kitchen sink at us and it was successful really,” said the back row forward.
 

“I don’t think we were good enough in a number of areas. In the first half it was close but those errors were still there and it’s tough to get into a game when that’s happening.
 

“We’ve just got to get our basics better. The amount of missed tackles and silly knock ons was just unreal and against professional teams you can’t afford to make those sort of errors so we will definitely need to improve ahead of the Gloucester game.”
 

In the face of stern Welsh defence in the opening period Exeter had struggled to cross the whitewash, going close three times in the first half to adding a second.
 

Foster’s try as ten minutes after the break was the decisive score and Exeter never looked back.
 

Nowell grabbed the third after some clever work from Sestaret and Myles Dorrian to go over in the corner before Sestaret secured the bonus point.
 

Nowell capped a man of the match performance with a second try of his own in the closing stages and, with no career Aviva Premiership appearances to his name, the 19-year-old admits it was a perfect way to underline his credentials to coach Rob Baxter.
 

“It was a great opportunity to show what I and a lot of the other guys could do,” he said.
 

“We are treated all as equal at this club and I think we played as equals today and that was really important because it’s an opportunity to underline your talent.
 

“It was a big performance there, I think both the young boys and old boys stepped up when they needed to today and that was important.
 

“I think we grew into it as the match wore on, we weren’t as clinical as we could have been in the first half but that all changed after the break. We had a lot of young players out there so I think it was about them just adjusting to things.”
 

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