EXETER Director of Rugby, Rob Baxter, believes his side are just ‘one performance away’ from turning around what has to date been a testing season for the Chiefs.

The Devonians head into their final game of 2024 looking to secure their first Gallagher Premiership win of the campaign when they play host to rivals Gloucester on Sunday (3pm).

Rooted to the foot of the table and winless in eight league starts, pressure has been mounting by the week on Baxter and his young side, which shows three changes from that which lost last time out to Sale Sharks.

In the pack, Richard Capstick and Jacques Vermeulen both return at the expense of Franco Molina and Ross Vintcent, while behind Josh Hodge is recalled at full-back with Tom Wyatt switching to the wing to replace England international Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, who misses out due to a shoulder injury.

Despite the changes, Baxter is optimistic his team can buck their losing trend in front of what will be a sell-out crowd at Sandy Park.

“I look at this group, look at how they train and their attitude towards wanting to get on with things and I’ve got confidence before every game,” he said. “I’ve felt that before every game we’ve played this season, I’ve never once gone into a game thinking ‘this is it, there’s no chance of us winning’.

“We are only a performance away from feeling very different about our season. Will it be this week? I certainly hope so. Will we put things in place to try to help it happen this week? We certainly will.

“We’ll see the game play out and then we’ll know afterwards what the next things are that we have to move forward with and how we keep feeling positive.

“Looking at this weekend’s challenge specifically, Gloucester have had a good season. They seem to have gotten comfortable with how they’re playing pretty quickly. They still back their set-piece game to finish things off, so the challenge for us is not to get caught up in thinking the game is going to be an end-to-end tennis match.”

Exeter Chiefs: Josh Hodge; Olly Woodburn, Ben Hammersley, Tamati Tua, Tom Wyatt; Henry Slade, Stu Townsend; Scott Sio, Dan Frost, Marcus Street; Dafydd Jenkins (capt), Richard Capstick; Ethan Roots, Jacques Vermeulen, Greg Fisilau. Replacements: Jack Innard, Will Goodrick-Clarke, Josh Iosefa-Scott, Franco Molina, Ross Vintcent, Tom Cairns, Will Haydon-Wood, Zack Wimbush.