Rob Baxter hailed the character shown by his Exeter Chiefs side after they battled their way to a hard-fought 32-21 victory over Harlequins.
A superb showing by Henry Slade saw the fly-half kick 27 points, but the Chiefs' phenomenal tackling and workrate were equally to thank for a result which sent them fourth in the standings.
The visitors were down to 13 players inside as many minutes in the first half, with Ian Whitten harshly sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on before Phil Dollman was correctly shown yellow for a no-arms tackle in the corner.
And Baxter felt the reaction of his players to that setback set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.
"We talked before the game and said it would be a test of character and what we need the players to do individually and collectively was show that character," said the head coach.
"We have got bags of it in the team and we said to just go out there, let it shine and we'll take what comes.
"To be fair, I wasn't expecting to be sat here looking at such a big test of character as being down to 13 men in the first 10 minutes.
"Interestingly, I am not sure if dealing with those 13 minutes in the way we did almost told the story of the game because although we gave away some points, we really battled through it. We defended numerous times on our line."
Quins opened the scoring when Nick Evans finished off a fine move to put the hosts ahead, but the Chiefs responded with Ben White charging down Danny Care's box kick to dot down.
Slade converted and booted a penalty to give Rob Baxter's side a surprise lead, with the Chiefs fly-half then swapping penalties with his opposite number Evans before the half was out.
Turning around 16-11 up at half-time, Exeter withstood more heavy Quins pressure before Slade showed silky running skills to go with his unerring kicking, slicing through the home defence for a fine try.
More penalties were exchanged before former Wessex player Matt Hopper dotted down to give Harlequins hope.
But a Slade penalty stretched the Chiefs' lead again, and not even a late sin-binning for Thomas Waldrom could see the hosts force their way back into the game.
"We almost grew in strength as the game went on," continued Baxter. "When you are in the thick of it there were some hairy moments, but the way we fought and fought and fought was great.
"Our tackle count for our defensive display must have been outstanding. If you look at the end when they had a scrum with a minute remaining, it would have been easy to go soft but we drove them back at the scrum, drove them up the field and Dave Ewers won another turn over.
"Those 30 seconds summed us up. We looked like a team that was not going to get beaten today and that is an incredible quality to have."
