How Exeter recovered from record 79-17 defeat to be on brink of play-offs
Gloucester, who were the first side Chiefs beat outside Prem Rugby Cup matches last season on 29 December, were in no mood to take their foot off Exeter's throats, running in another six tries as they registered their biggest-ever league win while inflicting the Devon side's worst loss. Exeter's defeat came having also had an awful season in Europe, culminating in a 69-17 defeat by Bordeaux that surpassed their record loss in European competition. "I think sometimes you just need something very abrupt," said Baxter.
"The old saying sometimes is you need to hit the bottom before you can start climbing back up again and I think the whole day created that. " Exeter suspend coaches Hunter and Hepher after record loss Baxter had seen his side go from perennial title challengers - they made six consecutive Prem finals from 2016 to 2021 - into a side that only won two games against 'full strength' opponents last season. 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. " 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 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. While 'Exeter 2.