Gloucester Rugby host Exeter Chiefs at Kingsholm on Friday night in the opening round of the 2025/26 PREM Rugby CupMax Llewellyn of Gloucester breaks away. (Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

Exeter Chiefs head to Gloucester Rugby on Friday night in the opening round of the PREM Rugby Cup looking to banish the nightmares of last season’s 79-13 record defeat.

While the fixture is very much an unofficial pre-season warm-up game ahead of the return of the Gallagher PREM in two weekends time, both directors of rugby are keen to continue the winning habit with Exeter beating Ospreys last weekend, and the Cherry and Whites getting the better of Munster.

There are five debutants in the Chiefs match day 23. Hooker Joseph Dweba, scrum-half Stephen Varney and centre trialist Harry Ascherl are all named to start while lock Andrea Zambonin and scrum-half Charlie Chapman are amongst the replacements.

Chiefs’ director of rugby Rob Baxter said: “It’s important for us to be successful in the cup as that will enable us to carry momentum into the league, and that’ll be key for us this season.

“To enter the PREM season ready to go, you have to put high energy and high intensity into these games. Our focus in this block will be to play in a way to maximise our opportunities and our minutes on the ball. We don’t want to overcomplicate things, we’re focusing inwards on ourselves and what we can achieve.”

Baxter said: “We’re expecting Gloucester to play in a similar way to our last fixture against them, as they had a very successful game plan that day, so it’s for us to prove we’re a completely different team than the one they faced back in April.”

Hosts Gloucester hand competitive debuts to new signings Will Joseph, Ross Byrne and James Venter, with former Chiefs hooker Jack Innard on the bench along with Josh Basham and Josiah Edwards-Giraud.

Gloucester director of rugby George Skivington added: “From my point of view, we aren’t settled on a team for the PREM opener, we’ve got a few lads coming back from bangs.

“Look. it’s a competitive game, we want to win it, there’s no doubt about that and the Prem Cup is a tournament that actually we had a lot of success in, we obviously won it two years ago. I think it’s a competition that it’s nice to be competitive in at the end. Being honest, the priority for me right now is to get everybody out there, play tough, see what the few lads who didn’t get an opportunity last week looked like. But we’d still like to win the game.

The game kicks off at 7.30pm.

Gloucester Rugby: 15 Charlie Atkinson, 14 Will Joseph, 13 Max Llewellyn, 12 Will Butler, 11 Ollie Thorley, 10 Ross Byrne, 9 Caolan Englefield, 1 Ciaran Knight, 2 Jack Singleton, 3 Afolabi Fasogbon, 4 Freddie Thomas, 5 Cam Jordan, 6 James Venter, 7 Lewis Ludlow (C), 8 Jack Clement

Replacements: 16 Jack Innard, 17 Archie McArthur, 18 Kirill Gotovtsev, 19 Matias Alemanno, 20 Josh Basham, 21 Mikey Austin, 22 George Barton, 23 Josiah Edwards-Giraud

Exeter Chiefs: 15 Will Haydon-Wood, 14 Paul Brown-Bampoe, 13 Ben Hammersley, 12 Harry Ascherl, 11 Nick Lilley, 10 Harvey Skinner, 9 Stephen Varney, 1 Will Goodrick-Clarke, 2 Joseph Dweba, 3 Josh Iosefa-Scott, 4 Lewis Pearson, 5 Rusi Tuima, 6 Christ Tshiunza, 7 Ethan Roots (c), 8 Ross Vintcent.

Replacements: 16 Jack Yeandle, 17 Kwenzo Blose, 18 Jimmy Roots, 19 Andrea Zambonin, 20 Kane James, 21 Charlie Chapman, 22 Ben Coen, 23 Zack Wimbush