Leicester Tigers assistant coach Matt Smith believes the club’s young talent will have taken a lot of important lessons away from Saturday’s Premiership Cup clash against Bedford.

Head coach Dan McKellar handed the reins to Smith for the day, giving the former Tigers centre the opportunity to further his development as a coach, as well as the players on the field.

Tigers gave eight players their debut for the club, something Smith says he cannot ever recall happening before in his time at the club.

“I’ve been around a while and that’s got to be a record,” Smith said.

“Before the game we spoke to the lads around what success looked like for us and that wasn’t necessarily just the score line and in the first half I thought we did some really good things.

“We speak a lot about our DNA and sticking to that and in the second half we lost our consistency a bit. Some poor discipline, some errors at set-piece but as coaches we were pleased with the effort.

“I think the big line for these young guys is today we saw some great pictures out there, some excellent effort and behaviours, but if they want to progress further up the ladder at this club it needs to be always.”