Exeter director of rugby Rob Baxter said he was pleased with how some of his young backs performed in their 38-26 pre-season win over Ospreys.
England Under-20s centre Nic Lilley and fellow youngster Campbell Ridl started the game at the United Rugby Championship side, with the latter scoring two tries.
With Tamati Tua likely to miss the season with injury and Henry Slade, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Len Ikitau all playing for their countries over the summer, Exeter’s youngsters could get more chances, especially at the start of the season.
“That’s a great sign for us in the strength through the side,” Baxter told BBC Radio Devon.
“You’ve talked about breeding that next generation coming through, that showed today that we kind of made the right decision going with our younger academy EQP [England Qualified Players] type lads.
“They did very well for us there in that first half, especially when we gave them some really hot ball.
“That’s the bit I’m pleased about is we looked crisp and we looked we could move at pace with hot ball and that’s been a little bit of an Achilles heel for a couple of years.
“We’ve worked very hard on in pre-season and the lads really bought into it how they produced those kind of pieces of hot ball that allowed us to look dangerous.”
Exeter begin their season on Friday night when they travel to Kingsholm to face Gloucester in the Prem Rugby Cup.
