Exeter Chiefs injury and availablity latest ahead of Bath Rugby

Flying winger Paul Brown-Bampoe is in contention to make his first appearance of the season for Exeter Chiefs when Bath Rugby come to Sandy Park in the PREM Rugby Cup.

Brown-Bampoe has been recovering from surgery on his heel during the summer to join a long list of back three options on the sidelines at the start of the 2026/27 campaign, along with Campbell Ridl (ACL) and Tommy Wyatt (ankle), but he is now in the mix to be part of a side consisting of a combination of senior players coming back from injury, fringe players and young talent emerging.

Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter said: “Paul Brown-Bampoe’s in full training now. It is a bit of a shame we couldn't have got him a few weeks ago, but he's back in full training now. So he's hitting all the markers he needs to hit, and he's fully available.”

Discussing selection for the cup game more widely, Baxter said: “It'll be a very much changed-up squad. It's going to be a mixture of the squad players who haven't played a lot of rugby yet. And so some of those are obviously our senior players, but they haven't played much rugby in the first five or six weeks of the season. And then obviously it's a great opportunity for some of the younger guys, some of them who've been on loan at other clubs, to come back in and get some time.”

Baxter also provided an update on the missing international duo, Dafydd Jenkins and Tom Hooper, who have gone into camp with Wales and Australia, respectively, ahead of the opening weekend of the Nations Championship.

Lock Jenkins missed the 28-31 defeat to Harlequins with a knee injury, while Hooper is nursing a sore shoulder having suffered a fracture in the summer.

Baxter said: “They've gone into camp, and now their kind of medical care and their assessment hands over to their international teams.

“They had checkups on the Thursday before we got into training to see where they were, and they were both a little way off from playing then. But scans weren't showing massive problems. They were things that required a day-by-day recovery process.”

Providing some insight on what had kept captain Jenkins out of action at the weekend, Baxter said: “He had some bone bruising in his knee and a little bit of swelling on a bit of cartilage. But the scan was as good as you could hope considering the pain that Daf was feeling; the scan probably came back about as good as we could have expected.

“We're not anticipating it being a long-term issue.”

Baxter also revealed that the likes of Ehren Painter will feature in the cup, and new signings Carwyn Tuipulotu and André Goedhals are set for their first minutes as Chiefs players.

However, one-cap All Black Dallas McLeod, who has arrived in England after helping Canterbury win the NPC in New Zealand, is not about to be rushed into the starting lineout.

Baxter explained: “He's in now, but he played right through the NPC with a lot of minutes right to the end. So we're not rushing to get him on the field.

“We're just slowly building up his training time. But our anticipation is that he will be available through the Prem Cup period, whether that's week two or week three of this block.

“But what we don't want to do is fly the guy in for 24 hours, a bit stiff, a bit sore, having played a lot of rugby; obviously there were the end-of-season celebrations in New Zealand. We're not rushing to throw him on the pitch and injure him. We're trying to get him up to speed in the correct manner, and then we can let him go.”