Gloucester’s young players have showed “good character” in the Premiership Rugby Cup so far, said director of rugby George Skivington.
The Cherry and Whites have two wins from two group games as they look to retain their title from last season, and fielded 12 debutants across the matches including academy players and those from Hartpury University.
They play Exeter on Friday in their final group game, with the Chiefs currently topping the group on points difference, to decide who goes through to the knock-out stages.
“There’s been lots of playing time opportunities for the young players so I think pretty much everybody has played rugby for Gloucester now this season, which is brilliant,” Skivington told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
“There’s lots of good young talent coming through and they really showed good character above all else.”
Skivington has been working behind the scenes for the last few weeks, with defence coach Dom Waldouck and forwards coach Trevor Woodman leading the team.
However he pointed to a number of performances that had caught his eye, including from forwards Deian Gwynne and Caio James, England under-20s lock Danny Eite, fly-half Rory Taylor – who are all academy products – and centre Max Knight who plays for Championship side Hartpury.
“We know we’ve got a couple of 18-year-olds in Deian and Caio, who are really exciting,” Skivington said.
“But I think there’s a couple of guys, like Max Knight came in and he does bits and pieces with us through the season but plays for Hartpury on a weekly basis.
“He came in and played an scored a great try here at Kingsholm [against Cornish Pirates] and I thought he had some really good touches.
“[We] gave Rory Taylor an opportunity to run a couple of games. I thought his kicking off the tee was outstanding and he had some really good moments in there.
“Danny Eite in the Kingsholm match here, he won man of the match so I obviously wasn’t the only one, but I thought he was the stand-out performer in that game.”
