Wales captain Dafydd Jenkins is set to return to action for the first time since July after recovering from shoulder surgery.
The 22-year-old lock has not played since Wales’ summer tour to Australia, but is fit to feature in Exeter Chiefs’ Champions Cup game with Toulouse on Sunday.
Jenkins missed all of Wales’ autumn international matches plus Exeter’s first 11 league and cup games – the Chiefs have yet to win a Premiership fixture this season.
“He expects high standards from himself and everybody else,” Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter told BBC Sport.
“He leads that in training just with the way he acts and the way he moves around the training field and the way he gets on with things.
“He goes on the training field every day expecting to be the best trainer, and that creates a lot of good qualities around the squad.”
Jenkins is the latest Exeter forward to return to fitness as Baxter tries to end the worst start in the club’s history as a top flight side.
Jenkins’ Wales team-mate Christ Tshiunza and highly-rated South African back-row Jacques Vermeulen are among the other forwards to return to fitness in recent weeks.
“The bigger thing is getting the group of them back together rather than one comes, one leaves,” added Baxter.
“What we need is we need to get the group to stay together and hopefully be a little bit injury free for a while.
“It doesn’t mean we can play that same group week in, week out, but it allows you to make the changes you want to make rather than the changes you get forced into making.”
