TONY Mowbray will ensure that all of his squad are given equal game time in the early weeks of pre-season as he weighs up his selection for tonight’s friendly at York City (7.30pm).

Rovers take on the National League North side fresh from their week-long trip to Austria which included a pre-season friendly with Sparta Prague.

Darragh Lenihan and Elliott Bennett both played the full 90 minutes in that one, with all 11 players who started the game completing at least an hour.

Mowbray is likely to given an extended run-out to the players who came on in the second half in the Salzburg friendly as his players get fully up to speed.

“It’s about giving everyone in those early weeks enough game time to get themselves to fitness,” Mowbray said.

“As you move in to the last week or so you try and focus on more of a team that might start the first game. At the moment we’re giving everyone minutes.

“Tuesday night at York it will probably more of the young lads starting and then the more experienced ones finishing the game but we will see.”

Academy graduates Andrew Fisher, Scott Wharton, Jack Doyle, Willem Tomlinson and Lewis Hardcastle played the final 19 minutes of the Sparta friendly having spent the week training with the first-team.

And they could all feature in an increased role in tonight’s friendly, with Mowbray keen to see them continue to improve.

The Ewood boss added: “It’s part of the reason they come away with the first-team and they have to try and stay with the first-team throughout the course of the season.

“If we can add a few more players over the course of the next week or two to beef up the squad a little bit and then we will see if those young players are still around the first-team when we kick off the season.

“But they are doing really well, working really hard and they have good quality to them.

“It’s just about using the young players at the right time, if we have aspirations of being right at the top end of this league for most of the season then sometimes the young players have to play bit parts around experienced players who know how to get the job done.”