NEARLY six months into our life as parents, and Hayley and I are facing our biggest challenge. Baby Bea is being weaned. As a newborn, mother's milk was sufficient to keep the little one growing and healthy. We're now onto apple and pear smoothies as the Bentley sweet tooth becomes apparent.

It amazes me that in no time our daughter will be into solid food and the milk that once was all she needed will be a distant memory.

As a baby, Bea has a lifetime to develop her palate. It may well be 20 years before she can take on steak tartar, a spicy curry or some of her father's attempts from the kitchen.

Developing her taste buds will be a gradual process and although it's certainly messy – as any parent will testify – weaning is no real hardship for the young one.

Applying the metaphor to a young rugby player, time is not a luxury one can afford. At best you get 15 years in the game. You need to be up to speed fast. To perform at Premiership level you must have the palate for rare steak as a one year old!

The million dollar question is how do you take a young academy player used to age-grade rugby and turn him into a hard-nosed campaigner?

In the case of Exeter Chiefs, the answer is total immersion. At the elite level you sink or learn to swim pretty fast. Our academy boys have very little time to move from the age-grade rugby they excel at to the rigours of the full-time game.

The move from school or college to the Exeter Chiefs environment is tough enough for them, to then be on the pitch lining up against seasoned pros is a completely new ball game but one they must adapt to quickly.

At the Chiefs, to help in the 'weaning', older guys act as mentors to the academy boys to help them develop. In some instances, this can be a bit surreal.

Big Pete Short dubs the youngsters 'dragons' whom he places under a wing as he is their dragon master. You could be forgiven for thinking this a bit peculiar but the dragon academy already has past members playing at Premiership clubs up and down the country.

The weaning process can at times be painful for those associated with it. Sunday's game with Bath proved so in graphic style. To a lot of our fans, it was not a good result for Exeter Chiefs. To some of the senior players (myself included), it wasn't a good day. But for the Exeter Chiefs as a whole, Sunday was a fantastic opportunity to get some raw meat into the babies!

For the last 10 minutes, in front of over 5,000 fans and live on Sky Sports, our academy front row packed down opposite internationally-experienced opponents.

Scrummaging behind the young bucks was pretty tough at first. Young Ben Rogers, in just his second senior game for the club, was opposite England squad member David Wilson. His wide eyes and nervous demeanour was understandable. This was going straight from milk to a cordon bleu meal!

Out in the backline, Ben's academy colleagues Sam Hill and Jack Arnott were already showing that they had a taste for the big occasion. Hill's bullocking runs were a continual thorn for Bath and young Arnott shook off a knockout early on to keep playing!

Up front the boy that is now being dubbed "the future" Dave Ewers was putting in his second man-of-the-match performance in as many weeks. It's fair to say that unlike Bea, the Chiefs' youngsters grow up pretty fast.

Tom Hayes has spoken among the squad that experience counts for nothing unless you learn from it. We've already seen how the senior squad learnt from last year's European odyssey to produce the result of the season so far against Perpignan.

By the final scrum, Ben and our other young bucks in the front row – Tom Cowan-Dickie and Lloyd Fairbrother – were matching the star-studded Bath boys and showing that although their learning curve was near vertical, they were up to the challenge.

Regardless of the 15 men on the pitch, we attack every game with equal vigour. Walking from the pitch on the back of a 30-point loss was tough. Looking back at it though, the experience and growth that seven of our academy guys had will prove invaluable.

In addition to that we saw comebacks from Chad Slade and Ben Moon. Sometimes it can be hard to draw positives from a tough result. In this instance, although it was a painful scoreline to endure, there were plenty.

As a final point about Sunday, a special mention has to be given to Adrian and Max, our groundsmen. The pitch is always very well-kept but with temperatures plummeting to record lows, many would have thought the fixture could have been in doubt.

Their efforts through the week in ensuring the Sandy Park surface was in tip-top condition deserve a tip of the proverbial hat.

Looking to the week ahead, don't forget to listen in to the Chiefs radio show on Radio Exe 107.3 at 7pm this Thursday and be sure to get to Sandy Park on Saturday when the Premiership returns and we host the fourth-placed Leicester Tigers in what promises to be a humdinger of a game.

Until the next time, stay safe and enjoy your rugby.