Captain Tom Hayes says Exeter Chiefs are aware of the threat London Welsh will pose at Sandy Park today.

Hayes was in the Exeter side who lost to Welsh in September and knows the Devon club, who have lost their last five league games, will need to respect them in the return fixture.

“They are a team that certainly make life hard for their opponents,” warned the Irish lock.

“They are a quality side with a lot of strong points in their team as we found out earlier in the season.

“They know what they want to do in each game and looking at them you can see they are effective in the way they do it.

“Right now they are fighting for everything and they don’t tend to lie down in games, so that’s also something we need to be aware of going into this weekend’s game.

“I’ve no doubt they will come here with the view to making life difficult for us, so we’ve got to be ready to meet that challenge, as well as impose our own game on them.”