How Exeter recovered from record 79-17 defeat to be on brink of play-offs

Exeter beat bottom side Newcastle 17-15 at home while wins over Saracens and Northampton came when their opponents were without their international stars.

"The challenge is you've got to decide how you confront it, and for me personally, I just confronted it honestly with what I thought we needed to do," Baxter said.

"Perhaps those were the tough conversations we needed to have earlier in the season that we didn't because we were trying to find positives.

"People who are involved in sport will know this, one of the things you try to do when there aren't many positives around is you try to find some positives, but the problem is sometimes you try too hard to find positives [and] you don't really head-on address the negatives.

"Sometimes that can break a group, if you make that decision, and sometimes it can make a group.

"I had one option, which was to go down the very brutal honesty route about our training quality and our performance levels and fortunately it didn't break the group, but it brought the best out of a lot of good guys."

Resurgent Exeter aim for play-offs

Image caption,

Dave Walder (right) is one of three new coaches who have joined Rob Baxter's coaching team at Exeter since the record loss at Kingsholm

That loss precipitated massive change at Exeter.

Hepher - Baxter's right-hand man since he first took control at Sandy Park in 2009 - and forwards specialist Hunter, who had taken over as head coach after Hepher's demotion, were suspended and never returned to the first-team fold.

In came experienced backs coach Dave Walder, while Ross McMillan was put in charge of the forwards and long-serving skills coach Ricky Pellow eventually left the club late last year.

And for a club that often signed just a handful of players each summer during their glory days, there was wholesale change in the squad - Australia stars Len Ikitau and Tom Hooper were part of a big recruitment drive that also saw the front row and scrum-half positions bolstered.

It appears to have worked.

While 'Exeter 2.0' - the side that came about after their stars that took them to a Prem and European double left the club three to four years ago - failed to trouble the play-off places, this new-look side could return them to former glories.

They lie fourth in the table, are into the semi-finals of the European Challenge Cup, and, but for two yellow cards in the final quarter, could have beaten league leaders Northampton last week.

"If you compare it to this stage last year it feels a lot better," added Baxter.

"But in other seasons we'd be in first or second in the Premiership and in semi-finals and quarter-finals.

"It feels better than last season, but we've still got a decent bit of work to do to come out at the end of the season and say 'we managed to hold a consistent level of form together across that final quarter of the season'."

However Exeter's return to Kingsholm ends up, it will not be as seminal a moment in the club's recent history as that drubbing in April 2025.