Led by the competition’s leading try scorer Paula Balakena, Gordon showed glimpses of their best in 2017 but struggled towards the back end of the season as their injury list grew. Coach Mark Philp has spent the summer building his squad’s resilience, both physically and mentally, and he’s hopeful that might be the different this season. Overview with Mark Philp: “Our preseason has been long but really good. We’ve implemented an entirely new strength and conditioning program and that’s paid massive dividends for our boys already, both physically and mentally. That was one of the biggest things we wanted to fix from last year,” Gordon coach Mark Philp said. “Probably half way through last season, we hit a bit of a slump both mentally and physically. We’ve planned our strength and conditioning program to counter that this year and have trained more in peaks and troughs to avoid that general decline. “I think we did really well in the first 10 rounds of