{"id":580906,"date":"2026-04-02T14:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580906\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:48:07","slug":"rob-baxter-exeter-chiefs-boss-signs-new-contract-with-prem-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/580906\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Baxter: Exeter Chiefs boss signs new contract with Prem club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last season the Chiefs finished in a historic low second-from-bottom, winning just four league games and suffering the heaviest defeat in the club’s history.<\/a> <\/p>\n

It led to many of the coaches who had been with Baxter for much of his time at the club – such as Ali Hepher, Rob Hunter and Ricky Pellow – moving on.<\/p>\n

Baxter is the only member of the title-winning staff left – with Dave Walder is now leading the attack, Ross McMillan in charge of forwards and Haydn thomas taking control of defence. <\/p>\n

This season with a new-look coaching team and new signings such as Len Ikitau, Stephen Varney, Andrea Zambonin and Tom Hooper, Exeter have enjoyed a resurgence.<\/p>\n

They are currently fourth in the Prem, seven points off leaders Northampton and seven points above fifth-placed Bristol.<\/p>\n

They are through to the knockout stages of the European Challenge Cup, hosting Munster this weekend, while Exeter reached the final of the Prem Rugby Cup, where they lost at Leicester.<\/a> <\/p>\n

it has been five years since Exeter last mafe a Prem final, having made each one between 2016 and 2021. <\/p>\n

Baxter hopes his new-look side, both on and off the field, can propel the Chiefs back to the play-offs in 2026.<\/p>\n

“Recent history on teams getting back-to-back finals, back-to-back wins, suggests it’s harder or it’s tougher now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s been quite a while now since there’s been the same teams in finals, back-to-back same winners.<\/p>\n

“I think what you can say is that you should I think be able to build towards an expectation you’ll be in and around the top four or competitive towards the top four on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

“I would like to think that that’s something we could certainly talk about striving towards and then that brings with it that you’re going to be regularly in the Champions Cup and you can learn things from that as you go along.<\/p>\n

“Those the kind of things I would like to say we could see in our future on a regular basis.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last season the Chiefs finished in a historic low second-from-bottom, winning just four league games and suffering the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-580906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}