CRAIG Conway was delighted to see fellow winger John O’Sullivan make his full Blackburn Rovers debut.

After two substitute appearances, 23 months apart and sandwiched between successful loan spells at Accrington Stanley and Barnsley, O’Sullivan made his first start for Rovers in Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at Birmingham City.

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The Academy graduate played for 67 minutes before being replaced by Tom Cairney and he will come into contention for tomorrow’s Ewood Park clash with Nottingham Forest.

And Conway, who is eight years O’Sullivan’s senior, said: “He’s went away on loan, in League Two and League One, and done really well, and proved he can hack it.

“It’s tough to go down there and, as a player coming in on loan from a Championship side, there probably would have been a few boys targeting him.

“But he did really well and he fully deserved his chance on Tuesday.

“He’s a good player who can play wide and more central as well. He can be happy with himself.”

Rovers boss Gary Bowyer hopes O’Sullivan, who came on in the 3-0 win at Leeds United two weeks ago, will learn from his St Andrew’s experience.

Bowyer said: “I thought he showed flashes and I think he’ll have learned that the power and the pace that he has, at this level now, and that’s no disrespect to the levels he has played at, there are opponents who are as quick and as strong.

“He will have learned that he has to mix his game up.

“We were very pleased to give him his full debut and now he’s got to build on that.

“We did it with David Raya at Leeds and now we’ve done it with Johnno and hopefully there might be one or two more youngsters we can get in before the end of the season because, with the restrictions we’ve got, we’ve got to see if they can handle the Championship.”

Rovers Academy, meanwhile, stretched their unbeaten U18s Premier League run to five matches with a 2-1 home win over Southampton on Saturday.

Ryan Masterson, with a header from a corner, and 15-goal top-scorer Sam Joel, with a penalty that proved to be the match-winner, shared the strikes for Brian Carey’s in-form side.

Rovers boss Carey said: “We made a really good start and were well on top.

“I felt we were stronger than them all over the pitch when we needed to be, we were dominant in a lot of areas against them and it showed at the end.

“There were a lot of good performances and a lot of positives in the game so we were really pleased with that.”

Rovers welcome Norwich City to Brockhall tomorrow (11am).