Henry Slade: Exeter going 'back to basics' in bid to reclaim Premiership title
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Henry Slade suffered his fourth Premiership final defeat in six visits to Twickenham with Exeter in June
Exeter's Henry Slade says the squad have "gone back to basics" as they aim to regain their Premiership title.
The Chiefs conceded two late tries to lose 40-38 to Harlequins in June in their sixth Twickenham final in a row.
"We've gone back to what we pride ourselves on in terms of high standards of each other, working hard and just getting back down to the nitty-gritty of things really," Slade said.
"The basics that you have to nail down to get you there."
Exeter reached the final having finished second in the league, and at Twickenham faced a Quins side that beat Bristol in extra time in a thrilling semi-final.
But despite being favourites Exeter failed to produce the sort of performance that had propelled them to a league and European double in 2020.
"I don't want to speak on behalf of people, but maybe there was a slight sense of complacency maybe," added centre Slade, who has 40 Test caps for England.
"Obviously we've reached the last however many finals, but every time you get to a final it's against a good team because they've had to do well as well to get there.
"Quins were really good that day and had a great season. We're disappointed that we didn't quite put out a performance as well as we could in that final, and that's the frustrating thing.
"We've got to get back to what we want to be about and gone back to basics, really - looking forward to really getting stuck in and working hard for each other and seeing what we can do this year."
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