Exeter and Cherries share expertise after takeover

Exeter boss Rob Baxter has said the Prem club has been sharing knowledge with Premier League side AFC Bournemouth.

The Chiefs were taken over by the Black Knight group, which also owns the Cherries, at the end of June, becoming the first US-based group to take control of an English Prem rugby side.

Exeter's heads of departments such as strength and conditioning, physiotherapy and sports psychology have since linked up with their peers at Bournemouth.

Baxter hopes he and his coaching team can get together with Cherries boss Marco Rose and his backroom team soon.

"The plan will be for us all to get down to Bournemouth for a day or something as a group if we can line it up," he said.

"I think that interaction will improve and move forward over a period of time.

"As it is, this has all happened just as we both got into the start of the season, so I think those are things that will happen a longer-term basis than right now.

"At the moment we're both fighting to get games of football and games of rugby won and time is a little bit precious at the moment."

Meanwhile, Baxter said the club's new owners have brought some financial stability to Sandy Park.

The deal, worth about £25m, meant Black Knight took over what had been a members-owned club in Exeter and settled a number of their outstanding debts.

In the three months since the takeover, Baxter said the club has already invested in new training and medical equipment.

"The most important thing that's changed is that we're not kind of living hand-to-mouth as we kind of were for quite a long period," Baxter told BBC Sport.

"What I mean by that is continually looking to see where cash flow would be going in two or three months' time and how we were going to keep things on a stable financial footing.

"So that's clearly a way better position for us to be working from right from the start.

"But outside of that, there's not been huge interference from Black Knight at this stage," he added.

"I'm assuming that over a period of time they will start to look to have more influence - whether that's commercially or the rugby department or the sports department - but I think it's early days for them and they're still just having a watching brief at the minute.

"The input that probably people are going to think about - will things change [on a] match day and commercially or whatever - I think those things will start to happen over the course of the season."