Rovers boss Tony Mowbray is pleased with the form the club’s batch of youngsters are showing in the early weeks of pre-season.

Lewis Travis, Joe Nuttall and Scott Wharton started for Rovers in their 2-0 friendly win over Hibs on Sunday while Willem Tomlinson played the second half and scored the second goal, with all four having travelled to Austria the previous week.

The quartet will be hoping to put themselves at the forefront of the manager’s mind ahead of the Championship opener at Ipswich next month and will get another chance to impress at Port Vale on Saturday.

The Rovers youngsters are attracting interest from EFL clubs, with a number of clubs making loan enquiries, while former boss Gary Bowyer, now at Blackpool, was an interested observer at Hibs on Sunday.

But Mowbray wants to cast an eye over the four this summer before deciding where their immediate futures lie.

He said: “What is pleasing for me is that the phone hasn’t stopped ringing with enquiries for three or four of our loan players.

“Everybody wants to take them on loan and it has shown me that we have some very talented young players at the club.

“The plan is initially to take them for the first part of pre-season, particularly as we are bedding in a few internationals who missed a bit of training.

“I want to see where they are, they all look an inch taller and their chests are a bit wider so let’s see when the ball starts rolling on a matchday whether they come to the mark.”

With Mowbray choosing not to risk a number of senior first-team faces at Hibs, there were also opportunities for other members of the club’s title-winning Under-23s squad.

Dan Butterworth started in attack, having featured on the bench in the New Year’s Day draw at Rotherham, while goalkeeper Andrew Fisher and defender Matty Platt, who played in the club’s Checkatrade Trophy matches during last season, played the second half.

First-team boss Mowbray now wants the young stars to try and push on and challenge the more established names at Rovers and create a competitive squad ahead of the Championship return.

He said: “At the moment they are really creating competition, Nuttall will be creating competition for Danny (Graham) and Travis is creating contribution for Richie Smallwood and Corry Evans and (Peter) Whittingham and even (Ryan) Nyambe as he played right back towards the end of the season for us.

“Wharton is another one I should mention, he looks a big strong powerful man now. Whether he is ready to displace a Mulgrew is another question.

“He has played a couple of loans in League Two so maybe a League One move might be right for Scott but then when he comes through that he has to be ready to play for Blackburn Rovers.

“Let’s wait and see how it goes, I am pretty open minded at the moment and am assessing them on a daily basis.”