Rob Baxter's message for returning internationals as update given on Wales star

Exeter Chiefs boss Rob Baxter has laid down the gauntlet to his internationals to get their fitness up to speed quickly when they return for pre-season training ahead of the new Gallagher PREM season.

Baxter says that he believes that a good pre-season last summer was one of the reasons the Chiefs took at least a point from every Prem game in the 2025-26 campaign.

He says that the Chiefs’ plethora of internationals, who make up the vast majority of the squad, will have to hit the ground running as they look to play catch-up with players who have already been back for a few weeks.

Baxter has also revealed that skipper Dafydd Jenkins, who missed the Nations Championship tests after having an operation on a shoulder injury, should be back in action before their league opener against Gloucester at the end of September.

“We had a hard pre-season last year, and I think the guys came in in good nick as well. So, most of the lads are up around where they were after four weeks of pre-season last year.

“The defining factor comes in a few weeks’ time when we’ve got quite a lot of guys away internationally when they come in. We need to see where they are because they’re going to have to get up to speed very, very quickly.

“They’ll have three or four weeks for that first PREM game, and they are going to make up probably at least a third of our 23, and that’s what’s really going to create the competition if we do really have challenges around most of those slots.

“And I think at the moment, you know, we’ve got there’s a lot of competition around the front row and probably around the back five of the scrum, especially around the back row when Tom Hooper is back.

“Daff (Jenkins) should be back around about the start of the Prem. That’s obviously a situation that will then make that back five look really, really strong and very, very competitive with the couple of the new guys who’ve come in,” he said.