Head coach Graham Potter took over at the club in May and included a host of Rusk’s squad from last year and the current campaign on his pre-season tour back in July.
The under-23s boss spoke about the drive that exists for his side, as the current crop continue to try to force their way onto the radar of the first-team squad.
He said, “When someone shows that they’re prepared to put young players into the team, then of course that’s a good incentive for the group.
“But he’ll only put you in there if you’re good enough, because the first team will always be judged on results.
“Our job is to help produce players that he knows he can trust in those situations. We have to do our job to show the first-team staff that our players are ready and can make an impact at that level.
“It’s a new challenge for everyone now. The first-team staff have demonstrated in the past that they’re willing to give players those opportunities and we have to be ready to step up to that.”
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The trio of Ben White, Jayson Molumby and Robert Sanchez are currently all plying their trade out on loan in the EFL, whilst elsewhere in Europe, the pair of Viktor Gyokeres and Leo Ostigard are into their Bundesliga 2 campaign with St Pauli.
Rusk spoke about tackling their second top-flight campaign without those individuals and talked about the objectives of the side each time they take to the field.
“It will be tougher this year considering we have players out on loan who featured a lot for us last season, but in every game our objective is always to just perform as well as we can,” he continued.
“There will be games where we lose and perhaps don’t play as well as we’d like, but by the same token we’ll have days where we get it right and get good results.
“My job is to keep that balance and perspective, and focus on the individual element. Part of it is learning how to win matches and part of it is to improve, but it’s not the be all and end all of our working week.”