The illness that swept through the Exeter camp saw a number of players drop out of contention for a place as the build-up to the game went on.
That was compounded with Tom Hooper yet to return from international duty and injuries to other international players such as Andrea Zambonin and Nika Abuladze.
“The amount of coughing and spluttering and sneezing that was going on in the changing room pre-game, I think we’ve probably got a few lads suffering from it as well,” he added.
“We are close to Tom Hooper’s return, obviously week by week we’re getting close to Paul Brown-Bampoe and Zambo being fit.
“Nika Abuladze’s not far off, we’ve got some more training time into Bachuki Tchumbadze.
“So those internationals are there or thereabouts and you look at today’s performance and we want to get them in the side pretty quickly.”
