Exeter Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter hopes he will see a reaction from his side after their surprising 45-24 home loss to Gloucester.

Last season’s beaten Prem finalists began the new season by conceding seven tries as a bout of illness went through the home camp.

It was a biggest home loss in any competition since Bordeaux hammered a struggling Exeter side 69-17 at Sandy Park in a Champions Cup fixture in January 2025 .

“You’ve got to be really careful that you don’t assume things are going quite well and actually you’ve got to put your foot down because it’s a game of Premiership rugby and you have to work extremely hard to make good things happen,” Baxter told BBC Radio Devon.

“I think we maybe kidded ourselves a little bit and thought we were getting a lot of hard work done, but I’m not sure if we really did.

“I think some of our movement patterns and some of our connection to get moving early was poor today and I think that to me will be something we’ll have to do with very quickly in the week.

“Maybe it’s a good sign to be frustrated and to want to work.

“We’ve got to decide now whether the lads want to roll their sleeves up and get on with it.”

The illness that swept through the Exeter camp saw a number of players drop out of contention for a place as the build-up to the game went on.

That was compounded with Tom Hooper yet to return from international duty and injuries to other international players such as Andrea Zambonin and Nika Abuladze.

“The amount of coughing and spluttering and sneezing that was going on in the changing room pre-game, I think we’ve probably got a few lads suffering from it as well,” he added.

“We are close to Tom Hooper’s return, obviously week by week we’re getting close to Paul Brown-Bampoe and Zambo being fit.

“Nika Abuladze’s not far off, we’ve got some more training time into Bachuki Tchumbadze.

“So those internationals are there or thereabouts and you look at today’s performance and we want to get them in the side pretty quickly.”