Boss Dean Ryan has spoken about his desire to get the balance to his team right as Dragons prepare to start the Guinness PRO14 Rainbow Cup this weekend on home soil.
Dragons welcome Scarlets to Rodney Parade on Sunday afternoon in Round One (kick-off 1pm).
The Director of Dragons Rugby is keen for the next generation to experience meaningful action over the coming months with a number of up-and-coming aces set for game time.
However, he has vowed to get the mix right to ensure they can prosper.
"It's not a development experience if we can't make it competitive, or unless we can get a youngster next to an experienced international,” he said.
"We are all in the same place of trying to thread some guys into a more recognised senior group. That is the balance we are after.
"We see the opportunity to get seven or eight of our youngsters really good competitive experiences over this two or three months. But we also didn’t want to lose the opportunity to keep some momentum from some of our form in recent weeks.
"We want to go into next pre-season on more of an uplift - I don’t think think that has changed for us.
"When the format (of the Rainbow Cup) changed, although there was disappointment about missing out on the opportunity to play some of the Southern Hemisphere sides, the focus for us has remained the same.
"We’ve selected the team accordingly. We have still got a big focus around our senior players, so we can keep momentum, but part of the challenge over the next few weeks is to ensure that seven or eight youngsters get good experiences too."
One player set to return is back row forward Taine Basham who could feature for the first time in four months.
The exciting 21-year-old injured his arm on New Year’s Day against Scarlets but could now return against the same opposition as a run of three Welsh derby game kicks-off in the new tournament.
"Taine will be back, which is great, and Ollie (Griffiths) is not too far away but won't feature this week," said Ryan.
"Taine has been really enthusiastic in training for the last few weeks, so the competition in the back row remains really high quality.
"The challenge is to get some cohesion in the group because there are plenty of good players there.
"With somebody with so much potential like Taine, the expectation goes up that he will hit the ground running.
"His rugby experiences are still pretty narrow, so we just want to get Taine back playing and enjoying himself.
"We know he can do stuff that other people can't and he's got to get that balance right.
"We haven't put any expectation of him picking up where he left off because that's a lot easier when 27/28 than when starting out."
We are all in the same place of trying to thread some guys into a more recognised senior group... That is the balance we are after...
