Premiership Rugby Cup: Exeter must learn from Bath loss - Rob Baxter

Wales centre Joe Hawkins was Exeter's highest-profile summer signing as a host of established players left

Exeter boss Rob Baxter says his side must learn from their 34-14 loss at Bath in the Premiership Rugby Cup.

Baxter's new-look side were 29-0 down at half-time before Josh Iosefa-Scott and Josh Hodge scored after the break for Chiefs, who had already booked their place in the semi-finals.

Exeter host champions Saracens in their opening Premiership game on Saturday.

"It's a learn for us, and that's what we've got to do is decide how much we are going to learn from it," he said.

"If we're a team that can be shocked into suddenly becoming a great Premiership team, then great, I don't personally believe that, I think it's going to take a lot of hard work.

"That's what I'm going to buy into and that's what I'm going to drive."

The loss was Exeter's first defeat of the season having earned bonus points in all their four previous victories in the cup.

"Some of our basics on just how we do things that we've practised and practiced and we've done well in three or four games under very little pressure, as soon as we came under any genuine scoreboard or physical pressure today, that's what dropped," Baxter added to BBC Radio Devon.

"That's happened to us before in the Premiership, and when we first came into the Premiership that was the thing that was the scariest thing that we could sometimes watch happen.

"If we learn quickly, we've got some dangerous weapons and today in a way was an interesting lesson for us, because if we'd have matched their intensity in the first 15 minutes it would have been a very interesting game.

"We grew more in the course of the game than they did, which is going to be important for us, I just hope we've got a few players that now understand you've got to go flat out, you cannot feel your way in a Premiership game.

"We're going to get patches like that and my job as a coach is to reduce the patches as much as we can."