Chiefs to face French side Lyon in Heineken European Champions Cup this Saturday

The Exeter Chiefs will face Lyon at Sandy Park this Saturday at 5.30pm as the Heineken Champions Cup resumes after the cancellation of matches in January.

The Chiefs currently hold the title after winning the tournament for the first time last year.

Rob Baxter, Director of Rugby, told Chiefs TV: "We've got a draw we want, which is obviously being at home, but now we've got the huge challenge of Lyon.

"They're scary, they're one of the foremost teams in France, but we've come up against that before and it's going to have to be a huge performance from us if we want to progress in the competition."

Lyon has won both its fixtures so far, while Exeter lost one of its matches 28-0 to Toulouse. The Chiefs were due to play Toulouse again in January, but this was cancelled due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Rob continued: "We definitely got deflated a little bit by it, because other teams played and we didn't, I think there was probably an assumption that that probably meant we weren't going to be able to collect points that we'd need.

"It's ended up ok because we've won the one game we've had to play, and we've won it well.

"Now we're in a scenario where it's all or nothing every round.

"It's a different competition, in some ways more challenging with knockout games coming a little earlier, and what we've got to do is beat one of the foremost teams in France.

"If we do that, we've then got to beat either Toulon or Leinster, two past winners [of the tournament].

"Lyon have been really prepared to play at tempo, to really carry hard, they've been really challenging to every team they've played.

"We're experienced enough now to know how to beat French teams, but that doesn't make it less physically tough.

"There's no easy way of doing it, but it's going to be massively exciting.

"We've got to be decide to be excited about it, to go after it.

"If you play to win, you can win."

Kickoff is at 5.30pm on Saturday 3rd April at Sandy Park.

You can watch the match on BT Sport.