Exeter facing 'toughest challenge' - Baxter

Exeter boss Rob Baxter says his side are facing their toughest challenge under his leadership after their poor start to the 2024-25 campaign.

The Chiefs have lost their first four games of the season for the first time since being promoted to the Premiership in 2010.

It is also the first time the club has lost four successive league games for 10 years after Exeter blew a 20-point lead in the final 15 minutes to lose to Bristol Bears on Saturday.

"Looking upwards isn't a tough challenge, tough challenges are when we lose our first few games of the season, that will be our genuinely first tough challenge as a club," he told BBC Sport.

"We're in it now, so let's see how we deal with it.

"That's from the group of players, that's the coaches, it's the supporters, it's the whole club.

"This will be our biggest challenge and we come through it positively and I think it's one of those things that will only will only serve us well in the future."

Baxter is the longest-serving director of rugby in the Premiership having taken over at Sandy Park in 2009.

Having led Exeter to promotion to the top flight in 2010 he guided the club to six successive Premiership finals between 2016 and 2021, winning two of them.

Exeter also lifted the 2020 European Champions Cup under his leadership - the last time and English team has reached the final of Europe's premier competition.

And he says that experience leads him to know that clubs can turn bad times around and rise to the top again:

"You've got to be very careful in rugby you don't have very short memories," Baxter added, with Exeter travelling to bottom-of-the-table Newcastle Falcons on Friday.

"Leicester spent a couple of years like this and it actually became a very important part of where they ended up, and they ended up being a Premiership-winning team.

"But they could've got relegated and nobody now really talks about that bit too much because afterwards they won.

"That's where you've got to decide are you going to embrace the challenge and enjoy it, grow through it and use it and you get to see things with a real clarity around organisations and functions - all the things that are in place, and then you move on from there."