Exeter Chiefs Target Premiership Title in Opener Against Gloucester
Rob Baxter, Exeter Chiefs’ head coach, has told his players they must set their sights on winning the Premiership title this season. After a run to last term’s final, he says anything less now feels like the wrong target for this group.
Exeter’s turnaround has been one of the stories of the division. In 2024-25 they finished second-from-bottom, scrapping clear of relegation trouble. Twelve months on they were beaten only at Twickenham, having won a tense semi-final at Bath before Northampton denied them the trophy in the final. Third place in the table told only part of that story.
That progress is built on the squad’s recent rebuild process, and Baxter wants the same group to push on rather than settle. Exeter open their new campaign at home to Gloucester on Saturday, a fixture that will offer the first real test of where this rebuilt side now stands.
For a club that was fighting relegation talk not so long ago, the shift in tone says plenty about what Baxter has built at Sandy Park.
Rob Baxter Transcript & Dissection: Squad Mindset and Title Ambitions
Speaking to the BBC Sport report ahead of the new season, Baxter set out exactly why he sees the title as the only acceptable aim for this Exeter squad.
I genuinely think that you’ve got a target winning the Premiership if you’ve lost the final, I just think you have to,
He was clear that finishing empty-handed at Twickenham changes nothing about what should come next.
If you lose a final I think you’ve just got a target winning one and if you come up short you come up short and then you can decide whether you’ve had a good season or not.
Baxter also made the case for why his squad’s continuity matters here.
But I just don’t see the point with a group of players that hasn’t changed that much, if I was one of the players I would feel a little disappointed if their head coach is not saying ‘come on lads, we’re going out to win this’.
Baxter’s logic holds up against what this squad has already shown. A team that reached a final a year after finishing second-from-bottom has answered the biggest question about its ceiling. Continuity does a lot of work in his reasoning too. Few clubs in the Premiership have kept their spine together the way Exeter have, and Baxter clearly sees that stability as a reason to raise expectations rather than manage them down.
His remarks echo Baxter’s comments on key players earlier this month, when he made plain that his best performers need to lead from the front rather than ease into the season. Given the win at Bath and how close the final defeat to Northampton was, setting the title as the target looks less like bravado and more like an honest read of where Exeter now sit.
Gloucester Challenge and Early Season Context
Title talk means little if Exeter stumble out of the blocks, and Baxter knows Saturday’s visit from Gloucester carries early weight.
There’s no point running away from it, you’ve got to hit the ground running and that’s what all the teams have been planning on doing, nobody more so than Gloucester, so we’ve got to make sure we get ourselves ready.
Baxter’s comment reflects genuine respect for a Gloucester side he expects to arrive fully primed for round one. Exeter head into the opener off the back of a pre-season built around fine margins rather than wholesale change, a continuation of the Exeter Chiefs’ operational developments reported this month at Sandy Park.
His message to the squad is simple. Pre-season form counts for little once Gloucester arrive, and only what happens from Saturday onward will settle where Exeter really stand this year.
Premiership Schedule Demands and Early Season Rulebook Impact
Baxter is using the calendar itself to focus minds. He points out how much of the season disappears in these opening weeks.
Over a quarter of the Premiership season is going to be gone,
With only 18 league games across the whole campaign, he says the margin for a slow start barely exists.
There’s only 18 games, once that five games has gone if you’re not established in the top half of the Premiership it’s going to be tough to chase it back down again, you’re going to have to put quite a lot of back-to-back wins together.
Exeter face a five-match league block and one European Champions Cup tie before the Autumn internationals pause the domestic calendar. Baxter treats that opening run as the platform for everything that follows.
So starting well across this first block of five games before Europe is going to be a massive part of building a successful season.
Rob Baxter, Exeter Chiefs’ director of rugby, wants that early ground banked before the internationals interrupt the league. Get it right, and the title he has demanded of his players stops being a talking point and starts becoming a realistic aim.
