Exeter Chiefs boss Rob Baxter 'not rushing' to sign new players for next season
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Luke Cowan-Dickie - who will leave for Montpellier in the summer - scored a hat-trick on Saturday against the Bulls
Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter says he will not rush into signing players for next season.
The Chiefs will lose Luke Cowan-Dickie and Sam Simmonds next summer, while Jack Nowell and Dave Ewers are among those yet to commit to new deals.
It comes as Bath announced Finn Russell's signing for the 2023-24 campaign earlier this week.
"We're not rushing into flying flat out of the blocks for anybody," Baxter told BBC Sport.
"We kind of think that it's a good time to assess where we stand on a lot of our current players and a lot of the positions we're looking at.
"It's a good time for us to assess what's really on the market and what's going to become available later in the day."
Next season is the last to have a salary cap of £5m, along with one marquee player whose wages do not count towards the cap.
Exeter have saw the likes of Jonny Hill, Sam Skinner and Tom O'Flaherty leave last season, in part due to the lowering of the cap from it's pre-Covid level of £6.4m due to the financial effects of the pandemic.
"I'm talking to a lot of players and we're assessing a lot of players," added Baxter, whose side are one of just two teams to register bonus-point wins in both of their Champions Cup pool matches this season.
"People sometimes forget this when announcements aren't being made very early; there are a lot of players still assessing their options.
"It isn't just that we're talking to a lot of people and they're all saying no to us, there's a lot of players out there still assessing their options.
"There are some markets that don't open up until relatively late. Southern hemisphere sides are not even in pre-season yet for the next Super Rugby season, so those guys who become available post-Super Rugby, they're in a totally different cycle to where we think we are."